


Eternity Knocks

by UmbranGazer



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Amnesia, BAMF River Song, Dimension Travel, F/F, Post-Library River Song, Regeneration (Doctor Who), River Regenerated, Space Wives, Time Travel, Trauma, Violence, and holding hands, it's 'Professor' River Song - wink wink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23946067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UmbranGazer/pseuds/UmbranGazer
Summary: Strange time phenomena makes the Doctor leave the fam whilst they were visiting a planet at the end of the universe; renown for its parties, fireworks and colours. However, the fam didn’t expect to be abandoned. The TARDIS is gone, the Doctor is missing and she isn’t answering her phone.Eager to find her, the fam find another strange alien who is having a very difficult day indeed. Having no other options, the fam must put their trust into an amnesiac woman who simply goes by ‘The Professor’.
Relationships: River Song & The Doctor's TARDIS, The Doctor/River Song, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 88
Kudos: 126





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> All alien and planet names, and details have been entirely made up or generated, save for the few that are actually in the show. Any relation to other similar named things are unintentional. (Or is it?)
> 
> Happy reading!

Jashe-K01 is a dying world. A small speck that has been tossed away to the far reaches of a dead universe, orbiting a tiny star that is slowly growing cold. From an outsider’s perspective, this planet is the pinnacle of unity and the last legs of civilisation. Housing hundreds of alien survivors that celebrate the remaining years away. Firing screaming bolts of light into the sky to colour the darkness, as if it’s somehow fighting the encroaching death with the vibrancy of life.  
A figure stands in one of the dim alleys alone, watching the throngs of partiers parading the streets, dancing to broken music. Drinking, eating and laughing as if they weren’t going to all die in the next hundred years. Would they all continue to celebrate if the planet’s dark secret was revealed? This is a dangerous part of the universe after all, and the lone woman knows it well.

This woman is a peculiar individual indeed: Tall, with tamed mahogany hair, and a penchant for heels and poisoned lipstick. Much of her life is a mystery even to herself, just a distant dream from long ago. Waking up with no memory in a wheat field, right in the middle of a human settlement far into the future — or in this case, far into the past. There are only two things she does know for certainty however. The first is that once upon a time she introduced herself as a _professor_. So, why not just call herself that? A perfect statement of purpose, and intent. The second is the ever present feeling of disappointment whenever she sees her hair. The colour is _nice_ of course, but she swears it was once curlier and more impressive, much like space itself. Thinking about it also gives her a god awful headache.  
So right now isn’t the time to ruminate on the empty vacuum that is her memory. There is something far more exciting going on here that’s just begging for her attention.

She raises an eyebrow as another firework is shot into the sky, a bright gold this time. It’s no secret to her that all of the glamour, colours and fireworks is a ruse, an elaborate cover up for rich con men and criminals to live out the remaining years of the universe in relative stardom, whilst maintaining their back-alley deals of powerful technology in relative secrecy. Free for good from the Shadow Proclamation or Time Agents, organisations that are too far out to have any grasp In this lonely universe. Many of course have settled down, just because a crime was committed a long time ago doesn’t make that person forever a criminal, that is if it’s within reason. But if there is one thing the Professor learned in the past few decades of adventuring and trying to find her missing memories, is that bad habits die hard.  
Now, as hard as it is to believe, the Professor _isn’t_ actually here to topple any sort of criminal regimes. Although she isn’t against being a hero, she just feels strange about the idea. Almost like the title is for someone else. A certain someone who most certainly has some sort of saviour complex.  
Besides… What good will it do if the people knew about the planet’s less than moral standings? Rather, she is here for a very different and more interesting reason.

Her eyes sweep over the crowd of partiers and with every few seconds, the Professor spots something unusual. A particular _something_ that shouldn’t be on such a happy go lucky ‘drink-to-forget’ sort of planet. And this particular sort-of _something_ got her attention very quickly. It reeks of time travel. It’s not particularly easy for her to explain how she knows this, of course. But time travel has become deeply ingrained in her since she found that old time and space machine during one of her, shall we say, _excavations_.

Hidden in the shadows or awkwardly walking with the crowd are aliens of the likes she hasn’t encountered before. Each one wearing a large protective suit and visor, not quite as noticeable as a Judoon, yet not exactly blending in.  
As far as appearances go, they were unremarkable. But there still lurks something fundamentally wrong with their presence, as if they flicker in her vision. Which is beyond strange, she should know. The Professor has encountered time anomalies on occasion, and yet she is so good at sensing it that it might have always been a fundamental part of her.

But just as she is watching them, the Professor can’t help but feel like they are watching her. What she still can’t figure out yet is _why_. There are countless patrolling thugs on the main street, all cronies of the various big bosses on the planet, marking and guarding their territory. Now, from what the Professor knows (and she knows quite an impressive bit), these thugs are all hulking members of a species with a name so long it took a Zellen lifecycle to pronounce, and cost a Zellen lifecycle if interrupted. However, to the rest of the universe they were known as the Zorda. A dangerous species, but very honest one that was dim-witted to the idea of cons or fraud.  
The Professor can recall a faint memory of once escaping a rampaging Zorda a few years ago, she barely escaped with her life back then.

A leaner Zorda is standing close by, he wore the standard thug gear and looked rather generic as far as Zorda’s go, but in spite of this normality the Professor had taken to calling him ‘Greene’, after his impressive scales. Three of Greene’s chameleon eyes were on her. It’s flattering really, considering that Guarding Zorda keep only one of their six eyes per individual. The Professor must come off more of a threat than she intended. Definitely quite the compliment.  
One of the suited aliens draws nearer and the Professor notices it leaning down slightly, apparently communicating with a smaller owl-like species that she can’t quite recall the name of. She wants to get closer, to figure out just what it is they’re talking about. But then they both turn and look at her simultaneously, which is unnerving and incredibly off-putting when the owlish race can rotate their heads 180 degrees.  
A Zorda passes her line of sight and both aliens disappear, despite her plunging hearts she quickly jumps into action when she notices them rushing down a much darker path that led to the towns poverty stricken lower levels. The Professor is absolutely not going to let them get away that easily, she needs answers on their presence in this timeline. If anything, to satiate her own curiosity. Giving the guards one last glance (and wink), the Professor disappears into the stream of colourful bodies and follows them.

The lower levels are damp and stink of rot, the streets are composed of rock and various salvaged metal components of space ports and ships. It’s not like salvage is difficult to find now that most of this universe has crumbled away. The Professor keeps her steps light and her head low, she tries not to flinch with every firework explosion in the air, the smell of gunpowder drifting through the narrow underworld as if it were a ventilation system. Probably is, come to think of it, prevents the inhabitants up above from spluttering from the plumes of smoke.  
There is a grumbling down one of the streets, a sound similar to rocks scraping together during a landslide or earthquake. The primary accented language of the ‘new-age’ Zorda. So it seems they noticed her disappearance and dive into a ‘not-permitted visitation area’ after all, might have laid the winking a little bit too thick. She reckons that she has a few minutes at least until they find her.

Walking faster, the Professor follows the winding paths and chases after the shadows of figures in the smog. Their loud footsteps echoing. The deeper she goes, the harder it is to make out the shapes of the aliens and not the withering residents. She persists, following them closely that she breaks out into a sprint when the vague outlines disappear. The smell of gunpowder thickens, her chest starts to heave and lungs burn. She doesn’t want to think about the likely possibility that she’s chasing after nothing at this rate.  
But the Professor swears that she still hears the rhythmic thunks of armour clan feet, hitting the metal grated ground so heavily that she can feel the vibrations throughout the various platforms around her, she can hear the breathing of the creature through that thick visor. So close to catching them.

She turns the corner, gracefully leaning and skidding over metal sheets in her way. The smog clears as two large industrial fans start to whirr to life _somewhere_ in this maze of a city. Hand resting on her hip, and grasping her gun holster by instinct. The Professor walks closer and immediately stumbles backwards, barely catching herself from walking off a sheer drop. A large landfill site rests down below in the darkness, because of course a planet run by criminals would use landfills as waste disposal. That explains the smell of rot.  
Some rubbish falls from up above, empty bottles and maybe a few broken tankards. She peeks up and sees the night sky, still lighting up from the fireworks. A bright green this time.  
The Professor scowls and drops her guarded position, the sound of tapping metal now irritating her. Just goes to show that just because you’re good at escaping someone, doesn’t mean you’re good at chasing someone.  
But where could they have gotten off to? There weren’t many turns, at least to the Professor’s knowledge, and it’s impossible to cross the pit without imminent death. Unless—

The Professor turns and manages to jump to the side in time, swiftly dodging the powerful blow of a metal sculpted arm. She follows it to the owner and isn’t surprised to be face to face with the alien she was tailing. The owlish alien is slung over one of the alien’s armour clad shoulders, limp and seemingly unconscious, it’s mouth bleeding profusely. Despite them shaking like a rag-doll as the alien moved, the Professor can see that it’s clipped onto the suit tightly. Like a trophy.  
“That was close,” she says, dusting herself off dramatically as the alien turns its visored head threateningly. “Really should be careful dear, someone could fall you know?”

It approaches again and throws another punch, the Professor ducks under the swing and propels herself to the other side of the narrow chamber. She grabs a sharp broken pipe from the random debris scattered around them, confidently, the Professor points it threateningly at the alien. In a way, giving it a chance before she reaches for her gun.

Nowadays she doesn’t do nearly as much shooting, sad to say that the gun is now just a functional fashion statement that she only uses in emergencies. As to why she doesn’t shoot nearly as much — The Professor takes a breath, that’s not something to think about right now.

She lunges and the tip of the pipe comes in contact with a plate on the metal suit with a dull ‘thunk’. Not her best hit, granted, but she can’t risk hurting the now-hostage on its shoulder. The pipe ricochets from the alien’s back and she barely has time to swing her weapon back up to protect herself from another punch. This time, the alien’s hand appears frosty; as if liquid nitrogen was being pumped through the suit itself and used as an offensive weapon.  
Fist hitting the blunt edge of the pipe, the alien stumbles backwards from the impact. Yet clearly it didn’t forget to leave without something to remember it by. The pipe is frozen within seconds, so cold that the Professor hisses and drops it, clenching her hand to her chest. Her palm red and burned from the frost.  
The weapon does not clatter as much as it instead shatters, fragments of fragile and frozen metal explode along the ground, jamming into metal or cutting into the Professor’s boots. Now this just crossed a line. The Professor stands firm and pulls out the small pistol from the gun holster, her eyes now dark and glaring at the alien. Thankfully, it made no further attempts to injure her and stands still before the gun’s barrel.  
“Who are you?” The Professor says impatiently, she’d rather get the introductions over and done with as quick as possible.

The alien’s visor hisses and releases a torrent of steam along the metal clasps holding it in place, she raises her pistol warningly as the alien reaches for the visor and pulls it off. The Professor is greeted with a blue humanoid face, ridged along the brow and jaw with what appeared to be teeth-like formations. The blue skin itself looked like tightly pulled parchment, as if a simple poke could rip a hole in it.  
“Who I am does not concern you.” His bitter voice replies, something tells the Professor that this is a soldier of some kind, although plenty of races are fundamentally militaristic.

“But the thing is, it _does_ concern me.” The Professor takes another look at the alien hanging off this soldier’s shoulder, they are unnaturally still and whatever visible skin is now grey. The Professor grips her gun tighter, she never gets along well with murderers. Especially when she can just _feel_ the timeline around her being re-written, her own timeline tangling up in it as a side effect.  
The Professor scowls, this was never meant to happen. “Why are you here? Last I checked, none of your kind ever set foot on this planet in the time stream.” A lie, she doesn’t bother to check anything like that. What is she? A lord of time or something?

The alien grins, showing off his grey teeth and black gums. The Professor tries not to feel like she’s just given it some sort of key information that will bite her back later. “We are echoes of the end.”  
Shadows loom closer and three more suited aliens join them. The Professor spies Greene in the darkness, watching over them alongside another Zorda (who isn’t as individualistic as Greene): Only four of their eyes are closed, hands clasping in-front of them — A symbolic Zorda stance during an execution — The suited aliens’ hands begin to hiss out steam, all of them reaching out for her with no second thought about the gun.

“ _Echoes of the end?_ How original,” the Professor says just before shooting one of them, she watches in morbid fascination and terror as the alien is only winded for a moment. She knows for certain that the bullet pierced the suit and hit them, yet the wound is closed. As if she never even shot them. Stranger still, she swears that she’s seen this before.  
The Professor backs herself closer to the pit as she shoots another one that got too close, but they simply brush off the wound. With a lunge, one of them grabs her arm. The Professor yelps in pain as the skin blisters and burns at the sub-zero temperatures. Despite the deadly predicament, it gives her a chance to watch how the bullet wound closes on the alien’s chest with a hiss.  
She’s thrown off her feet and violently lands on some scrap framing the wall. The shards of metal tears into her skin, a particularly long pipe from an old space shuttle spears into her side. The Professor drops her gun in shock and is powerless to stop the kick to her chest, she can feel her ribs crack and her spleen rupture. Now _that’s_ going to cause some problems.  
Everything burns, the pipe is still jutting out of her side, skin speckled with metal shards. It paints the metal walls and grates with reddish-gold hued blood. Gritting her teeth, the Professor pulls herself to her knees, she can feel more blood dribbling down her chin from a split lip. Her hearts slowing their beats to try and control the damage, it’s not lethal yet. She glares at the soldier approaching her, his blue face still pulled in a terrible grin.

The corpse of the owlish alien is dropped from his shoulder and the Professor flinches away from the large soulless eyes looking at her; their beaked jaw is cracked wide open, tongue hanging just above its neck. A tooth missing. “I think, you’ll do nicely here—” The soldier points at an empty patch of translucent skin on his cheek, a place that is always _just_ in the line of sight. The Professor doesn’t know if she should feel honoured or disgusted. They all draw nearer and in a strange twist of fate, the Professor doesn’t know if she’s ready to go yet. This face — if she can even call herself that — is too new, she still doesn’t know about her past, nor what type of person she is. She still hasn’t seen _that_ _person_ again.  
There is one thing for certain — the Professor takes a shuddering breath, tilting her body backwards — she isn’t going to be some kind of trophy. She kicks her legs out and falls back into the pit, letting the darkness and smog consume her as she watches the red fireworks up above.


	2. The Dying Planet

Another explosion impacts above them, bright red and fluorescent. The smell of sulphur in the air, mixing with the smell of cheap alcohol. This is like Yaz’s cop nightmare and dream times one hundred. She watches the crowds around her and enjoys her ‘ _absolutely-zero-alcohol'_ drink in whatever peace she has. When the Doctor told them that they were going somewhere ‘fun’ and ‘active', this was not what Yaz was expecting. Pubs, music, dancing and fireworks on a dying planet seems like the last thing the Doctor would enjoy after all that’s happened — Or rather second last, if she counts holiday resorts and Spas.  
It’s not like it’s a terrible bar, in fact it was actually quite a quaint one. It reminds her of a bar just down the road from her place in Sheffield, nice and clean. The potted alien plants in the corners really brightened the place up. Quite literally, they were bioluminescent. No sorts of stares from the other customers either, well, not the kind that she would get back in Sheffield anyway. Also there is almost a suspicious absence of fights or arguing or any kind of disagreement in general.  
It’s far too suspicious, as if it’s hiding something.

“—isn’t it great?” Yaz blinks and looks back to the table she’s sitting at, the Doctor is looking at her expectantly with large gleaming eyes. She looks like she’s about to jump off her chair at any moment and run into the crowd, it’s not like she hasn’t done it in the past before. Yaz glances to the two other bodies joining her at the table: Graham is busying himself looking at some sort of futuristic magazine (something he found somewhere along the way), a bottle of some strange future lager by his right hand. Ryan is drinking the same drink the Doctor ordered Yaz, he looks to be listening to the music and bobbing his head to the beat.  
The Doctor sighs, “honestly, try to sound smart and no one is listening!” Her hands grip onto her own drink, it’s completely untouched and unopened. What’s peculiar about it is that Yaz can’t read the label or tell what the drink even is.

Yaz clears her throat, and presses her lips slightly. The Doctor is now pouting dramatically, sitting back on her chair and looking around with bored eyes. “So this place, it’s a dying planet?” Yaz asks and glances around again, the throngs of partiers didn’t seem to cease. “Doesn’t look it."

The Doctor shrugs, “people have different ways of coping,” she says, “this lot prefer to drink and forget.” There is a pop from the crowd and Yaz turns in time to watch the glitter and confetti decorate the streets. It’s surreal to actually be here, watching the end of the world. It strangely makes Yaz feel hollow, like just visiting this place is making her vitality crawl out of her skin. Those large aliens that she keeps seeing now and again don’t make her feel any better either. They look like large rock lizards and barely move. She swears that one of them is watching their table - or even specifically just at the Doctor - with all their six eyes.  
“The Zorda,” the Doctor says out of the blue, and answers her question like she usually does. Yaz raises an eyebrow at her. “Those ‘rock-like chameleons’ you keep looking at. They’re called the Zorda, don’t go asking them about what they are or where they come from anytime soon, otherwise we’ll be stuck here for a really long time.”

Yaz gives her a bemused look and starts watching them again, her copper instincts kicking into gear. A sort of strange feeling she got from time to time when she was almost positive that someone either was a criminal, or knew one. The Zorda rubbed her the wrong way.  
“What’s up with them?” She asks the Doctor, hiding her gaze briefly as one of them turns its head. “Why are they just standing around? Are they not up for a party?”

The Doctor hunches of the table and glances at the aliens, her voice is light and slightly tentative. “Well, someone has to keep the peace. It’s not like there’s any laws out here protecting people... And there are _a lot_ of people here that have hurt someone in the past, some of them still do.” Yaz snaps her eyes to the Doctor, she glares at her sheepish look.

“Hold on,” Ryan says with a frown, he must have been listening this whole time. “Are you saying that there’s no police here? So what, is this like some dream planet for criminals?”

She gives them an affronted look, “excuse me! Not everyone here is a criminal, and people can change you know. Besides, what difference does it make? And why is it when I mention that a place is ‘lawless’ that people instantly think of criminals? The Wild West was lawless and not everyone committed crimes back then.” She shuffles slightly in her chair, fingers tapping her drink, “okay, so the Wild West wasn’t _completely_ lawless, but still.”

“Is there a reason that we came here Doctor?” Yaz says, because clearly there must be a logical reason that the Doctor would have any business being here, “didn’t fancy you to be the type to bring us to a boozy planet.”

“What can I say? I like to defy expectations,” the Doctor says with a strained smile, “and no, there’s no reason. I just thought that it would be nice to show you something hopeful. Only a few places actually celebrate the remaining days in the Universe. That’s what makes Jashe-K01 special.”

Yaz wants to believe her, but her current track record with telling the truth hasn’t given Yaz any confidence. There is a strain on the Doctor’s face, a sort of emptiness that doesn’t leave her. She could talk for all eternity but never actually _talk_. But if the Doctor’s comfortable enough to sit in one place for an hour after touring them about, then Yaz trusts her. Even if she doesn’t quite believe her.

Graham lifts his bottle and takes another swallow of a drink he described as bittersweet and a little like medicine. He thumbs at the device in his hands and suddenly stops. His eyebrows are as raised as his drink.  
“Oh, what’s that you found out now?” Ryan asks him, a smile on his face. “Is it another story about the bloke that lost his robot bird?” Yaz grins at the memory, she felt sorry for him in the same way she felt sorry for the regular drunk out on the street.

“Nah mate,” Graham’s voice is strained and he puts his drink and the tablet down onto the table, smiles now fading they look at the headline and recognise the blue faced alien on the front cover. The large black words of ‘ **Murderer at Large** ’ and ‘ **Fugitive in Jashe-K01** ’ etching into Yaz’s brain. There is another picture below of an alien with owl features, their beak tilted down to give them the appearance that they were smiling. The media always like to choose the most stomach-churning picture of the victim, in the end.

“Is that Tim Shaw?” Yaz says, looking at the others quizzically. “Looks a bit different. What’s he doing here? He’s trapped right?” Ryan and Graham nod enthusiastically, she looks to the Doctor who is staring stoically at her drink. An expression that Yaz couldn’t read, and one that she’s been seeing a lot recently.

“That’s not him,” she says after a beat (or a few beats in her case), she looks up and her eyes are dark and confused. Lost in thought and stuck in the ‘quiet-I’m-thinking’ face. “But what’s a Stenza doing out here? They never exactly lasted this long. This one looks like a warrior… But no, can’t be, doesn’t have enough teeth.”

The image on the tablet starts to flicker and blur, like one of those old TVs with the VHS tapes. “What’s happening?” They all sit up straighter, leaning away slightly from the device as if it were going to explode on them. Yet rather anti-climactically the tablet returns to normal, this time a very different person is on the screen.  
Yaz notices that this is a lady that looks like trouble. She has a sort of confident air around her which no screen could hide, and there is a look in her eye, like she’s about to do something quite dangerous indeed. However, Yaz can see the injuries and scrapes on her body. Her white blouse has scorched sleeves and the ends were fraying, if she squinted, Yaz can see tears and splotches of something dark on her side.

“Oh my days.” Ryan watches the device with his mouth slightly open, probably wondering if it would do anything else by that curious glint in his eyes.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she isn’t their wanted murderer,” Graham says, glancing around the table.

“Definitely isn’t,” the Doctor agrees, although her eyes are still focused curiously on the picture. Once again, she’s silent and keeping everything to herself. Although, this is the first time she’s gone this quiet when her object of attention is clearly a very attractive woman. Yaz looks back at the photo and frowns as she remembers another one of her adventures with the Doctor, back when they were searching for a thief with two hearts. The Doctor had mentioned someone, ‘ _Missy’_.  
She hopes that this friend won’t be anything like the master, they’ve had enough trouble from him.

“Is she someone you know?” Yaz asks, worrying her lip as she tries to predict the Doctor’s answer.

The Doctor blinks and looks back up, “nope, never seen her before —” Her voice changing back into a determined and calculating tone as she moves on quickly, Yaz doesn’t know what to think of that answer. “— Alright, so, _tiny_ change of plan. Turns out there was actually a problem here after all.” The Doctor receives three very unimpressed looks, she continues without so much of a pause. “I might have noticed that there was something _off_ about the timeline here.”

“Off?” Ryan raises his brows, “how can you tell if a timeline’s off?”

“Sort of like—“ The Doctor fumbles, searching for words, “—like you get a massive case of deja vu, or like you’re in a dream, but you know that something is wrong and doesn’t add up. Things that shouldn’t be there are sitting in front of you, events that shouldn’t happen are happening—“ her hands gesture a little wilder, eyes growing more concerned and staring back at the futuristic magazine, “— _things_ that shouldn’t exist, _existing_!”

“So, what you’re saying is that we need to do some snooping.” Graham pokes the screen. The impression of the image that the Stenza made is still not lost to Yaz.

“Right,” the Doctor says, her lips press together and she scrunches her eyebrows. She's still staring at the woman's picture. “But we’ll need to be very, very careful. We’re walking on a delicate ‘string’ of time right now, just think of it like we’re a tiny bit dimensionally and temporally displaced.”

“Oh lovely,” Graham mutters, “nothing like being displaced.”

The Doctor quickly presses her lips and looks away, her hands burying into her trousers, Yaz can just tell she’s guilty about something. “Promise you won’t be mad?”

Yaz blinks and lets out a long sigh, the boys follow suit. “What is it this time?” She asks, shoulders sagging and head tilting.

“We need to split up individually again—” she says and Yaz opens her mouth to protest, “—We’ll use the communicator units and keep in touch! Besides, we need to find this woman, she’s probably in some sort of trouble right now. Although she probably gets herself into all sort of trouble by the looks of it.” The Doctor stares a little too long at the picture again. Yaz is tempted to snap her out of it.

“Hold on, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ryan asks, beating her to it. Although come to think of it, he’s often beat her to the chase when it came to questioning the Doctor’s motives recently. “This place isn’t exactly the best place to split up in, and we don’t know for sure if she’s even innocent.”

“Isn’t this place full of criminals anyway?” Graham adds, “she’s in perfect company.”

“What’s with that pessimistic attitude? Clearly there’s something going on and she’s connected to it.” The Doctor scrunches her nose, “also, you all done brilliantly when we split up on Earth that one time, and the time when we were all on different planets.”

“Thing is Doc, it’s just been happening more and more regularly,” Graham leans on the table, pointing a finger at the Doctor in that typical manner of his. The small doubt of ' _you don't want to be around us,_ _'_ lingers in the air, unspoken. “Look, we get it if you want to find this lady for some time alone. But just don’t go forgetting about us.”

“Graham, I could never forget you.” The Doctor looks at Ryan and then to Yaz, a polite smile and a glint in her eye, “any of you.” Her eyes then widen slightly, a dawning look of realisation on her face which never fails to give Yaz excited shivers. “What do you mean by some _time alone?_ ” 

Graham stutters, “I just guessed that, well maybe you’d want to talk to someone? or— I don’t know. You fancy her? You’ve hardly stopped looking at the picture and I’ve never really seen you do that before.”

“ _Graham_!” Now she looks positively insulted. “You humans are always the same, I get curious about one person and instantly you lot think there’s _something_ going on. I mean, something _is_ in fact, going on. But not like… That!” She stands up and leaves the drink on the table, giving them a cross look. Yaz can’t help but grin. “Enough of that, let’s get cracking.”  
She squints at the crowds with a grimace as her fingers click the small communicator stuck just below her ear. Or as she likes to call it, a comms unit. Yaz can faintly hear her own whirring to life in response. The Doctor groans, “too many people… I’ll see if I can find a way around, they’re too touchy-feely if you ask me.”

“I’ll loop around the other side then,” Ryan says as they all rise from their seats. “It’ll keep me balanced if I take one of the walkways.”

“A crowds never bothered me.” Graham shrugs and then finishes his drink quickly. "What are they going to take off me anyway? My sarnies?"

Yaz looks down at her own drink, choosing to abandon it instead of actually finishing it. She didn’t like the peppery taste anyway. She looks around the street and spies a small walkway leading to some sort of subsection in the city, it’s like some sort of multilayered alleyway by the looks of it. What better place for a criminal to hide in? Or in this case, a _maybe_ criminal person who is framed for a crime that they _didn’t_ actually commit.  
“I’ll see what I can find through there,” she says and points at the nearest exit.

They all give each other lingering looks, it has become a parting tradition now. Just a moment to look— _actually look_ — at each other and say ‘ _I’ll be alright_ ’ in some sort of strange muted language. It gets harder for her every time, especially when it starts to feel like it’s not at all that genuine. The novelty of it all is fading, Yaz supposes, and the magic is draining.

The Doctor disappears first, because it’s always the Doctor that leaves them behind. Ryan and Graham give Yaz one last glance before they leave as well, each insecure in their own way and yet wearing a mask that hides it. Yaz looks back at the pub table and finds the drink the Doctor left behind. She would have thought in the past that the Doctor was just being wasteful or forgetful, she often gets distracted at the worst of times. But after all their adventures, Yaz knows that there might have been another reason behind the drink, something that the Doctor meticulously planned out to the exact detail.  
She takes the small bottle and quickly fits it into her jacket pocket. Better safe than sorry.


	3. Unlikely Friends

Golden streams of time are dancing in front of her eyes, melding into her beaten body like a cocoon. Leaking blood is replenishing and diminishing all at once, her body mending and tearing, stuck on the pinnacle between life and death. But if there is one constant in this flux of right and wrong, it’s that the Professor is slowly falling to what is most definitely her definite death. No regenerating out of that one.  
Wait… Regenerating? Is that what this gold dust is? The Professor slowly blinks, watching the space-time around her wind and meld in various shapes. Memories slowly spill behind her eyes, memories of bright gold engulfing her, changing her.  
The memory creeps into her mind ever so quietly, nothing at all like the flashbacks in the past. Closing her eyes, she remembers when she was a little girl in a street she doesn’t recognise, dying of something slow and cold. Another memory follows it, she was a young woman in a large hall. A pain radiates from her body, sharp and quick, she was shot.  
Then all she could feel is numbness in her hands and a hot flash pass through her mind; the smell of books and burning flesh in the air. She feels like she’s being sucked away all over again, echoing in the dark all alone. Until she wasn’t.

Falling again, the Professor tries to make sense of these memories. To connect them to the earliest thing she could remember, golden fields and kind humans. How did she get there? And _why_? The Professor takes deep breaths and tries to slow her thundering hearts. She frowns, that’s not quite right. Why _does_ she have two? Why is she so different from everyone else?

A sharp pain slices into her temple, piercing into her skull. Ears ringing, the Professor can barely hear her own voice echoing and screaming down the pit’s walls. There are flashes of memories behind her eyes, a man with different faces and several people following him. Others are enemies, all united under one alliance. Another flash, and pain. The Professor is whimpering, this is too much. She tries to cradle her head, to force the images out but she can’t. Her body is moving in slow motion and her mind has just unleashed another torrent.

_An empty planet, no hope. The final resting place marked by a blue police box. Trenzalore. They said goodbye, she was dead for a very long time._

This can’t be possible, it’s just a nightmare or some sort of psychic attack to discombobulate her. This just can’t be real! The Professor’s wounds continue to burn, her body flaring up, living despite the fact she feels like she’s going to regenerate. It’s painful, it’s agony. Golden hooks of time digging into her bones and jolting her into something she was never meant to be.  
But it’s gone too far, she knows too much. The Professor is crying out for it to stop.

Everything pauses. The ringing is gone, replaces by a faint crackling in the distance. The Professor is on her knees, digging into the red dirt of a planet she’s swears that she’s heard of but never seen. She looks to the ruins of the dome and the citadel, the alleys and the streets. Recognising them from old drawings and pictures from a previous life. This is Gallifrey. She heaves a breath, it still burns. It’s still real then, or perhaps it’s still torture. She can’t tell. So she looks up even further.  
The burning sky, the smouldering silver trees and the dust of the mountains are raining around her.  
Gallifrey burns before her.

The Professor can’t bring herself to stand. Her eyebrows want to knit together, to scowl in confusion and frustration. She wants to go to the ruins and search for survivors, search for the illusive _him_ at the tip of her tongue, or find out what went wrong. But she just can’t.  
It hurts too much to move.

She jolts, as if something pushes her backwards. Time and space whips around her again, brushing through her hair and howling past her ears. When she finally lands, the Professor is lying on the cold metal floor of the lower levels in Jashe-K01. Alone, in more ways than one. She climbs to a stand, gripping onto the pipes lining the walls. She bites her tongue, muffling her grunts of exertion and continues to pull up her heavy body, disregarding the swimming black spots in her vision. She breathes in deep shivering breaths and finally takes a moment to look around and regain her bearings.  
This lower level hallway seems far more narrow and cluttered, behind her is an opening leading to the landfill pit. She’d rather not ponder as to why she’s even here, it’s clear by the pipe still rammed into her side that she wasn’t imaging her encounter with those aliens. The Professor will just write it off as being lucky. With a strained grin she looks ahead, into the darkness, that’s when she flinched. Granted, there are a lot of things to flinch about right now, but this particular one felt like a camera going off. An instinctual reaction to the flash of lights. Well, the Professor hopes that the image shows her assets well, whatever it may be used for.  
Lifting one leg in front of the other, the Professor begins her trek back to her delightful ship, her delightful and admitedly salvaged ship. If she can get to the med-bay — that is, the ramshackle area she’s decided to make the med-bay — then she can finally rest and heal and try to _process_ everything. Maybe it’s time she pay those golden fields a visit again.

She stumbles on some loose debris, yet catches herself on the remains of a steel compression door. More blood leaks from her wounds, it’s getting a bit foggy now. The Professor grumbles and marches on, she recognises this hall, at least she believes that she does. Her ship should be close by, hidden beside a wrecked ship in a larger obsolete hanger.

“Hello?” A voice echoes down one of the adjacent halls, making the Professor freeze on the spot. “Hello, are you there?” It repeats in a language she recognises but hasn’t heard with these new ears; Earth english. Listening closely, the Professor peeks around the corner, watching a relatively young girl talking to a small device just below her ear. “Honestly Doctor! This is not funny!”  
 _Doctor?_ The Professor mentally reels, her body relaxing unnaturally at the utterance of the word. It’s not an uncommon reaction, anyone who introduces themselves as a Doctor of sorts has her mind spinning. But this time, hearing the way the English human pronounces it (and mimicking it herself), makes her chest ache slightly and throat feel tight. She really hopes that she doesn’t cry.

The Professor barely listens to the one-sided conversation, too busy trying to ease her hearts rate and calm herself down. Asides from the name she discovers nothing of interest. The human’s team apparently had split up and this _Doctor_ wasn’t answering her comms nor her phone. Her instant theory is that they just got bored of the humans and left them.  
But her body tenses. The thought that the Doctor got sick of them and abandoned the group is highly unlikely, she doubts that this Doctor is even capable of doing such things. At least, the Professor believes so. She thinks that the Doctor would have the decency to abandon them on Earth.  
Memories of someone flood her mind again, a figure she can just barely picture in her mind. It makes the Professor accidentally kick some of the metal rubble as she stumbles from another headache. Thus bringing the sprightly human’s monologue to an abrupt end.  
“Hello?” This time, she isn’t talking into her device.

The Professor squints as a bright light flashes in her eyes, she hears the lightest of gasps, rushing footsteps, and suddenly feels a warm hand gripping her arm steadily. Since when were human’s this quick? The usual sort she deals with were all far too slow and boring. She tries to smile at the girl, perhaps have a little flirtatious fun before she passes out.  
“Hello,” she tries to purr yet only manages to shudder. Slowly and subtly she presses her hand into her bruised side, avoiding the metal pipe that’s _still_ lodged there. She’ll have to remove it later in the ship, the pipe is doing a much better job of holding the blood in than she would.

The girl’s mouth opens momentarily in bewilderment before she taps the side of her neck and says “I’ve found the wanted woman, we’re on lower levels by the pit, follow my signal and hurry.” In a rushed and breathless manner she presses the comm on her neck again, it starts to blink and hum with electricity. The Professor sighs, this girl must be another bounty hunter. If she only had her gun she would have—  
“Let’s get you somewhere safe.” The girl grips onto the Professor tighter, letting her rest her weight on one shoulder and walks down the hall. Now this is a delightful surprise. “Do you know any place where several giant rock lizards won’t come looking for you?”

She’ll admit, she stuttered slightly at her wit. She thinks that they will get along _splendidly_. “Not too far, take a left and then left again—“ The Professor hisses as her legs start to grow weaker. “—Should be next to some broken down karaoke buses and on top of a wire heap.”

“Right,” the girl says, her voice light and curious. “My name is Yasmin, Yaz to my friends. I came here with a few friends of mine. Although one seems to have gone missing.”

“I’m assuming it’s this Doctor of yours?” She says, acting as if she _didn’t_ know that the two other humans were called ‘Graham’ and ‘Ryan’ from her snooping. Best to keep those details a secret for now, she’s very good at keeping secrets.

“Yes,” Yasmin says wearily. “What’s your name? And more importantly, what happened to you? They have you marked down as a murderous fugitive here.” She asks as they take the first left and start walking down a darker hall.

“I’m the Professor,” she replies in the typical way she does. Yasmin raises an eyebrow curiously. “ I was ambushed and then I expertly escaped. As for murderer however…” A brief flash in her mind, the grey walls of Stormcage. She takes a breath, “well, I haven’t killed anyone.”  
And yet, she isn’t quite sure of that.

“So you fell into the dark and dangerous pit of doom… And you’re still alive?” Yasmin splutters and the Professor hiccups a laugh. She can tell that Yasmin is suspicious of her, she feels how tensed her shoulders are under her leather jacket. At least she’s prioritising their safety over curiosity. Yasmin clears her throat. “So who attacked you? Was it the Stenza?”

“The who?” They round the next left, the Professor can just about see the scrapped buses in the hanger down the hall. Just a little further.

“The Stenza,” Yasmin says matter of factly, “beings that live in sub-zero temperatures and have the skin to match it. Also like putting teeth in their face and hunting down living trophies for fun.”

“Well, if you put it that way—“ The Professor gasps and silences herself when she hears two sets of heavy footsteps heading their way, the ringing of the metal feeding into her developing headache. She tries to hide in the shadows but Yasmin’s grip is a force to be reckoned with, she kept them stable as they continued to slowly approach their goal.

“That’s just Ryan and Graham,” she says with such confidence in her voice. For their sake, the Professor hopes that she’s right. “So, Stenza?”

The Professor suppresses a hiss as the pipe in her side shifts, “Yes, I did. They got me in this state, very cult-like. They are doing something with the time-line. Barely managed to get away by falling into the landfill pit.” She wobbles slightly, her brain feels like its full of unproductive static. Yasmin doesn’t need to know about her strange space-time escapade, at least not right now.

“Alright, save your strength, we’ll talk later,” Yasmin says, and she has a hard time disagreeing with her.

The abandoned hanger is a rusted scrap heap of old universe treasures; parts of hulls, vehicle bodies and vending machines were strewn about impulsively. Over the wreckages, various emergency lights that hung on their wires kept the area lit for the scavengers and workers. None of these lights match in colour, giving the room the impression of a disco. Which, given the planet, is fitting. Although it’s not the best of things to be looking at when the Professor is about to pass out into a ‘healing coma,’ or whatever it is that she gleamed from her new memories.  
Sweeping around the larger piles of wreckage, they pass some very impressive components of some sort of computer system. It’s moulded in an unnatural way, hooking inwardly at the ends of curling wires and welded metal plates. It’s art, of a sort…  
“Didn’t expect to find something like that,” Yasmin says, she’s still dragging her further into the metal jaws of a ruined ship. The Professor can feel her brush against the pipe in her side whilst trying to catch a better grip, she takes a sharp breath and shivers as the area starts to numb. “Don’t die.”

The Professor laughs again, although it’s starting to sound like a sob. “I won’t… I am very resilient.” She hangs her head somewhat and catches Yasmin’s disbelieving frown. She notices the energy in her young eyes, a sort of primal fear that all manners of life have when they are facing an end to something. The Professor has seen enough of that expression for a full lifetime, regenerations and all. The smell of smoke still caught in her lungs.  
“What happened to your friend, the Doctor?” She blurts out, because _of course_ now is the right time to ask. _Why not_ find out what happened to a stranger with a name that makes her feel so empty and discarded?

“She left without us, Ryan couldn’t find the TAR— Er, her ship, where she parked it and Graham said that she left him some sort of weird message.” Her voice is full of exhausted bitterness, “she’ll turn up sometime, she always does.”

“You have a lot of trust in her,” the Professor says, blinking blearily when she thinks that she can see the blinking yellow light of her ship's lamp.

“Of course.” The answer is immediate and by the sounds of it, insulted. It shoots a bitter pang of familiarity into the Professor’s gut.

Her ship isn’t exactly in her finest glory right now. The door is hanging off and the wooden frame is chipped, several of the frosted glass planes are cracked and the wires have tangled around it impossibly. The yellow booth light is, of course, flickering and the red paint is shaven and blistered on every visible part of the wreck. Only the inner booth is in any functioning state, which is good, considering that the keypad for the phone leads to where the central console is.  
“Is that a red phone box?” Yasmin says with a disbelieving huff.

“Yes, and she’s gorgeous,” the Professor says and she can feel her telepathic circuits grumble flatteringly, the doors suddenly rattle open and the broken down booth illusion disappears with a mechanical flicker. The Professor savours the gasp beside her when the human peeks into the console within. “My TARDIS. I was going for another box shape… But she had other ideas, also, isn’t this one lovely?” She says to Yasmin with a wink, the girl simply opens her mouth in shock.

Heavy breathing and loud footfalls catch up to them, the Professor slowly turns her head to see the other two humans Yasmin was talking about, running towards them. Despite being winded, they appear to be in good condition. Which is strangely relieving.

“Is that—? Whoa…” Ryan looks a shade paler, does she really look that bad?

“Stenza attack, not that bad otherwise, never felt better..” She tries to joke, “You’re Ryan and Graham then? I’m the Professor, it’s a pleasure.”

Of course, with such a quick introduction, she expects a whole slew of questions. Humans like to ask questions. Mostly they ask about her ship or her name, those are the real winners in the question lottery. But instead, and rather disappointingly, the older one (whom she deduces is Graham), looks her up and down.

“Blimey, you look horrible love.” He squints, unabashedly looking at the metal pipe (which on a _side_ note, is really starting to annoy her). The Professor, despite the surprise of the humans _not_ being surprised, appreciates his jibe, she was never much a fan of doom and gloom.

“Help me get her into the TARDIS.” Yasmin grips her arm tighter and leads her to some stable part of the mass of cables, gripping onto some for leverage. 

“TARDIS?” She hears behind her, followed by two more exclamations of surprise. The Professor grins, sucks a deep breath in through her teeth, and hoists herself up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I had planned this story to be 30,000 words. Just a nice, 30K that tells a short adventure. I thought _"I can't possibly need any more."_  
>  Oh, I was so very wrong.
> 
> I now have over 50,000 words that I need to format, edit, and post. This isn't even counting the indefinite number of words I still have yet to write because the story isn't even finished yet. But unfortunately, my schedule is very... Erratic. I am very lucky as I wasn't too affected by the self-isolation, due to my course and work being centred around computers. But I've been very busy because of it.
> 
> So, this is my long winded way of saying... _Buckle up._


	4. The Red Box

The TARDIS shudders at their arrival; in part an acknowledgement of their presence, but more so in disapproval at the Professor's injured state. The lights turn on automatically and fills the room in calming waves of blues that gleam off the central hexagonal console. Smaller pillars of white crystal frame the TARDIS bridge, they look cracked and broken, giving it the appearance of polished glaciers or cracked glass. The floor is fairly standard, only disturbed with the occasional intricate pattern of gold circles (that seem to be a sort of brand found everywhere on the ship,) and some grooves that resemble tree roots.  
The way that the humans gasp and stare makes the Professor ever so proud and rightfully smug, yet when she looks into their eyes she only sees curiosity. Their little gears turning inside their heads, trying to make sense of everything. It’s nice and all, but it’s not exactly the _wonder_ that the Professor is hoping for.  
They almost look like they’ve seen something like this already, to add insult to injury, the way they glance at the TARDIS’s bare panels and exposed wires makes her skin grow hot. She knows a pitiful expression when she sees it. Well, can’t win them all, not everyone likes a work in progress or mediocre patch repairs.

“We need to get out of here,” she says, shrugging off a few pairs of supportive arms. The gesture on its own makes her hiss from a sharp pain in her hands, her palms dotted in burns from climbing the mound of wires. Thinking of it positively, at least she’s not complaining about her side anymore.  
She struggles, yet manages to limp her way to the central console. Eyes targeted on the dematerialisation circuit controls, a set of small gears and buttons. With shaking fingers, the Professor allows her body to work on autopilot, executing the perfectly memorised sequence on the various console panels. The Professor glances at her human guests, noting how they stood braced beside the metal bars framing the room, their attention split between her and the concerning shadows looming at the frosted panes of the TARDIS door. Wasting no more time, she pulls the ornate lever and hangs on tight.

No sounds of dematerialisation greet their ears however, only the spluttering whine of the TARDIS powering down the thrust and bleeping unsettlingly. A strong shudder runs through the ship and nearly knocks the Professor off her feet.  
“No, no, no, what happened?” The Professor glances at the screens, in tune with the TARDIS thrumming. “Stasis field? Oh now that’s just rude.”

The blues of the TARDIS start to fade into a dimmer and richer navy, the walls of the ship — covered in decorative gold inlays of past exploits — start to shudder and jitter. A slight fizzing sound reaches her ears, the sound of electricity.  
“You are detained for disturbing the peace,” says a grave voice through the intercoms, it’s a gravelly, rumbling, and very unhappy voice no less. “Leave your transportation and minimal damage will be sustained.”

“Ah, was wondering when they would catch up.” The Professor leans back against the console, still keeping pressure on her side. The humans continue to flitter between watching her and the door, they look a lot calmer than they really ought to be. “They must have camouflaged with the surroundings, followed us silently.” She grunts as a searing hot flash pulses from her side, oh this injury is _very_ painful.

“What do we do?” It’s Yaz that speaks first. There is a calculating look in her eyes, her stance is far more defensive than her peers. She definitely must have some sort of training. “How do we drop the stasis field?”

“Well _you_ will all stay there and continue to be pretty,” she says with a flirty grin, the group look at her with bewilderment. “I need to overwhelm the stasis field, it’s usually connected to a generator of sorts—“ The Professor turns back to the console, the metallic ringing of electricity now humming louder in her ears, “—one big explosion should do it, but— Ow!” The shock from the TARDIS makes her recoil, and stumble to the ground. She’s just quick enough to not fall completely. 

“What happened?” Ryan asks and rushes over to her, steadying her alongside Yaz.

“Electric shock, the TARDIS isn’t letting me touch the controls,” the Professor says and grits her teeth, “knew I should have fixed those telepathic circuits.”

“How are we going to overwhelm that field if you can’t even touch the controls?” Graham asks with an impatient huff, a resounding thunking sound from outside making them jump.

Then, an idea springs into her mind. A stupid idea that might even get her killed, but it should give her something incredibly valuable. Time. Straightening herself again, the Professor reaches into one of the open panels and pulls out a thick bundle of wires. Of course, having an audience does make her feel the urge to voice her thoughts and ideas for the benefit of dramatic exposition — which is definitely a new feeling — but why spoil the surprise? They might even object to the idea, and then she'll have to waste more time persuading them that she, in fact, _does_ have a vague idea of what she's doing.

“So what are you doing?” There is a slight suspicious edge to Yaz’s voice, the Professor doesn’t reply and chuckles as she drags the cables to the frosted phone box door. She throws her companions a wide grin.

“I’m seeing them off, also, hang on tight. This will be a bit bumpy.” She turns her back to them as they dive for a good grip once again, and shakes her head slightly, her body is jittering in excitement, “I’ve never done an unshielded emergency dematerialisation into the unknown before.” Taking a deep breath, she yanks the door.

The Zorda in front of her is joined by two other guards, dressed head to scaly claw in augmented combat gear. All of them are equipped with very large guns, a bit overkill in any stretch. The Professor smiles sweetly at them, gripping the cables in her hands tightly.  
“You are to be executed for your evasive actions, step out of your transportation and face immediate death.” The Zorda focus all of their eyes onto her, yet she still remains in the confines of her TARDIS entryway.

The stasis field generator is a small fragile looking pointy device on the ground, it’s just close enough for the Professor to make out that this particular variant has a remote deactivation setting and trigger. Well, the device isn’t going to make a fashion statement anytime soon but it’s a handy little thing. The Professor presses her lips, if she can play this out correctly, she’ll be able to knock the stasis field circuit into the TARDIS upon dematerialisation. A handy device like that is bound to be useful at some point.

“We will not repeat.” The threatening guards raise their rifles and take aim, the red glow of the energy cylinders lighting up and charging. “Informal execution commencing, fire at will.” 

“Now wait just a moment!” She raises her hand in a pacifying gesture, “aren’t you going to tell me what you are first?”

The guard is silent for a moment, the other two flanking him refuse to drop their loaded guns. When the Zorda speaks, it’s certainly not the answer the Professor is hoping to hear, “under new rules, convicts cannot ask questions in attempts to trick us.” 

“But I have a right to know!” She tries, despite knowing deep down this terrible plan will fail. Since when did the Zorda follow orders that contradict their ancient traditions?

The Professor feels her hearts drop and stomach roll as the guard stands tall. “Proceed with execution.”

Well, onto suicidal plan B. She takes a deep breath and braces, her hands raise and yank at the ends of the thick cable. Just as the stream of lethal red energy collide with the shield, a massive explosion bursts around the perimeter of the TARDIS. The ship rumbles and the breaks whine, and just before they can take off, she lunges at the stasis field generator and holds onto the door for dear life.

The Professor watches in fascination as the vortex encompasses the TARDIS right in front of her eyes, she only barely pays attention to the burning of her body as she is exposed to the raw energy of the TARDIS’s thrust, she can hear the humans yell as they hurtle through the vortex, hitting each stream of time and space like a large bump in the road. Her senses regain only moments before the inferno that follows the materialisation sequence, and the Professor finally closes the door.

It’s a rough and painful landing, enough to shove her to the ground and knock the wind out of her lungs. The door creaks open slightly when she lets go of the handle, the smell of burning meets her nose. A bubble of anxiety wells in the Professor’s throat, and she quickly raises her head to look out the door, hoping and praying not to see that burning wasteland again. Thankfully, it’s only the remains of the scrapyard that are out through the door. She shakily breathes out and uses the door as leverage to stand again, and peers outside. The remnants of broken ships and components have been reduced to horrifically melted metal, the radius of the blast is so large that it even decimated that odd statue she and Yaz had passed however many hours ago. The Professor tries not to think about who built it, or if they were also caught in the blast, there has been enough death today. The image of black burned metal is gone when the door is properly closed.

The Professor stumbles away from the door, dropping her new gadget to the ground for her or the TARDIS to put away later. Once she reaches the crisp white central pillar, she starts turning gears and cranking the various nobs on the console. There is no chance that she’ll be able to control the ship manually in this state, better to put it on autopilot and get to some sort of safety. _Properly_ , this time. A switch flicked here are there and finally she presses down on the impressive ornate lever with a strained tug.  
Adrenaline wearing thin, the Professor slumps on the console. Her knuckles turning white, she doesn’t dare to move until the whooshing of the TARDIS engines fades away and safely reaches the much more neutral territories of the time vortex.

“That was, intense,” Ryan says, he’s leaning against the bars. Finally, they actually look scared. But the Professor can’t make any comments on this right now, she’s put her injuries aside for too long and her arms are numb.

“Emergency procedures activate,” She says, her voice is rough and hoarse. There is a flurry of steam and movement around her, like clockwork the TARDIS changes one wall of console room with loud mechanical clangs. Panels opening and gushing out steam, exposing more equipment that is usually so neatly tucked away. Now, the humans are awing at the sight of her marvellous ship transforming itself with but a few simple words, a much better expression than fear. And at least that is something the Professor can be smug about confidently when comparing herself to whatever ship the Doctor might be flying. She strokes the metal console, hearing the TARDIS showing off to the new guests. Her brilliant, one-of-a-kind type 45 TARDIS.  
To think, she found this beauty whilst she was running from a brigade of Sontarans. Hidden in the shrubs, disguised as a fallen tree of all things.

Along the root like metal grooves on the floor, a helpful guardrail raises to catch the Professor. It moves with her as she walks to the various medical equipment that has sprung forth from the ridged walls. the TARDIS outdone herself this time around, now she was fully showing off. Which is a first, the Professor glances at the humans as she passes. That’s when she finally senses it, Artron energy. It’s radiating out of them like a beacon. The remnants of another TARDIS.  
The time travel she can understand, how else were three Earth human’s at the end of the universe? But a _TARDIS_ … they just couldn’t have one, it’s impossible. Much too complicated for humans to fly, not to forget that this TARDIS is one of the last of its kind, she said so herself the day they met.  
Well, now she simply must find this _Doctor_ they mentioned.  
“Haven’t had to do this in a long time,” the Professor says as she reaches one of the dark counters and settles near the medical table. There is a time and a place for solving mysteries and now is certainly not the time. She grabs a syringe from one of the storage units; painkillers, apparently ‘Time Lord friendly’ according to the TARDIS, whatever that means.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Ryan is hovering nearby as the syringe pierces her skin, he’s watching the equipment wearily with Graham. His face quickly morphing into something a tad more apprehensive when he sees the needles her TARDIS laid out on one of the metal tables. Purely for show.

“Can you set up a blood transfusion?” The Professor asks, because there’s no point instantly assuming that they can’t do the most benign thing just because they’re human. A blood transfusion and flying a TARDIS are two very different matters. She carefully disposes of the syringe in one of the chutes.

“I’ve had to change my own IV drip once,” Graham says, perking up slightly. “It’s not that different, just a different content in the bag.”

“Good, get a bag from that metal box there and hang it up on the medical hook.” Oh, she’s so glad she got the medical unit to work. Her eyes draw to another compartment, one that was frustratingly too far away for her to reach. She always does this, never thinks to place the Cell Replicator in a more easy to reach area. She staggers towards it, but her knees at last give up the fight and crumple underneath her. Again, Yasmin is the one to catch her. The girl must have been watching her instead of the TARDIS — not that the professor can blame her, she _is_ quite the specimen too.

“Steady on,” she says and helps the Professor sit on the metal table. Graham already has the amber blood-bag swaying in the correct stand. “What is it that you need?” Yasmin asks, glancing back to the white box-like cabinet.

The Professor sits back, plucking a metal clasp off the table and strapping it on her good arm. The blood is injected automatically and she can feel her body start to warm again. She looks down at her right arm and watches a white film appears around the various burns, automatic bandage generation at its finest. Saves a lot of time, despite not being quite as effective as nanogenes.   
“I need a device from there that will induce accelerated cell-growth—” she reaches over her shoulder and pulls out a slim metal shard, her vision is getting hazy again. Yasmin rushes to the compartment and returns in a blink, the Professor hadn’t expected that the human would be so quick about it. Just for how long where these humans travelling around the universe?  
To further surprise the Professor, the team repositions themselves around her. Ryan braces her arms, letting her lean her forehead on his shoulder If she wanted. Although the feeling of being held down sparks a panic in her, she isn’t in any position to question it, not when the TARDIS is beginning to spin and her vision is growing dimmer.  
“This isn’t the first time you’ve done this then?” Her voice is slurring.

“No,” Yasmin says sadly, “it isn’t.” 

The Professor hardly feels a thing as Yasmin and (most likely) Graham begin to heal her cuts, letting the device do it’s thing whilst monitoring the (stolen) automatic bandaging systems installed in the table. Are they not impressed by that? Or does this mean this Doctor person already has these devices installed in their ship? The Professor huffs, her levels of smugness starting to plummet by the second.  
“I’m going to remove the pipe now,” Yasmin says, her voice withering.

“No,” the Professor quickly says and shrugs herself back into the present again. The motion nearly makes her fall off the table, “let me do it.”   
She didn’t care for their protests, and firmly grasps the offending pipe in her side. She hears them wince as she begins to pull.

“I can’t watch,” Graham says, he’s hiding behind his hands.

She takes a deep breath, and _tugs_.

Amber blood spurts out of her side, covering her hip and splattering wetly on the table top. She bites down a yelp, lurching forward and inadvertently head-butting Ryan in the chest. She groans, taking deep breaths and pressing as hard as she could down on the injury whilst Yasmin got the device working. Her hearts-beat deafens her, black spots overwhelming her vision. Then everything becomes heavy, she can’t feel a thing again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally managed to update this! Out of all the chapters so far this one required the most editing, yet to my dismay it still comes off as rushed. Hope you are all staying safe and are well :)


	5. The Message

Yasmin shivers as she disposes the last of the blood covered parchment down the conveniently open chute. Performing an emergency surgery, now that has to be something they won’t be forgetting anytime soon. Not like she could forget any of this; disappearing Doctor, mysterious and murderous Stenza, a stranger bearing a weird resemblance to the Doctor, and said stranger owning a TARDIS. It’s shaped like a red phone booth for goodness sake.  
The ‘Professor’, as she called herself, is cold to the touch and lying still on the table. She looks like she’s dead. Graham impulsively keeps checking her heart rate, growing all the more agitated when he can’t feel her weak pulse, yet swears that he felt more than one as they helped her inside.  
It’s a healing coma, at least that’s what the Doctor told her after experiencing it a number of times on the more dangerous trips. Every single time Yaz seen her in that sorry state, she felt like her heart would combust. Just because it isn’t the Doctor this time around, doesn’t make it any different.  
But if it is a healing coma, that means that the Professor is a Time Lord just like the Doctor. Maybe even someone she knows. It would fit, given that nearly every Time Lord they met has had some sort of title instead of a proper name, a TARDIS, and generally give off some aura of mystery due to some strange connection to the Doctor.  
Or maybe it’s just the Doctor’s Time Lord friends that are all weird. That’s likely too.

“She’ll be alright, yeah?” Ryan asks, he’s been sitting on a small medical seat for the past hour silently. Either watching her or glancing at his phone, he took Yasmin’s story about how she found the Professor a lot better than Graham did. “I mean, we aren’t exactly stranded here now. Right?”

“She’ll be fine,” Yaz says. Because the Professor has to be fine, she _needs_ to be fine. “Remember the last time the Doctor got conked out? She got up an hour later saying she had a right great nap.”

Ryan quirks a small grin, it fades quickly when he looks back to the Professor. Probably asking the same thing that Yaz is. Just who the hell is she? “Really got a beating… Did she tell you how she managed to get away from the Stenza?”

“Not exactly.” Yaz remembers finding her beside that pit, how suspicious it all seemed when she said she got away by plunging headfirst into that darkness. There was no way she was telling the truth back then, no one can simply escape a Stenza on a mission by falling to certain death. “According to her, she done so by jumping into that pit we found earlier. She must have climbed right back out of it too.”

“That’s mental.” Ryan leans his head on his hands, still watching for any signs of movement.

“I don’t believe her.”

He raises an eyebrow and straightens himself again, “I don’t see how else she could have escaped. Maybe the Stenza kept her alive to use her as a scapegoat?”

Yaz widens her stance and paces, “do you think the Stenza would have just let her go without taking at least one tooth? Besides, why would they care if they became a headline on some dying world? It’s not like they haven’t made the headlines in other planets.”

Ryan stays quiet, pressing his lips together as his fingers fidgeted with his phone. Yaz clearly made her point, but she doesn’t feel satisfied by it much. She isn’t sure what to do now. Too nervous to move away from the med-bay corner of the console room and investigate the only other _proper_ TARDIS she’s ever set foot inside. It feels like an invasion of privacy in a weird way.  
Unlike the Doctor’s TARDIS; which was always wheezing or rumbling or even fizzling, the Professor’s is near silent. There is an occasional groan here and there, an odd melodic thrumming emanating from within the cool glass supports when she stands a little too close. But still, it’s like a haunted house in a horror film.  
Now Yaz can see where the Doctor’s coming from when she said that her TARDIS is alive.

Her hand glides into her pockets in her boredom, that’s when she remembered that glass bottle the Doctor ordered. She takes it out, running her fingers down the strange dark glass curves as she stares at the label. Again, the dotted language is illegible, which is strange. Didn’t she have a universal translator implant? She glances at the Professor, and back to the bottle.  
Maybe it just wasn’t for her to read.  
Yaz places the bottle down beside the Professor’s table, she’ll appreciate it (or not) once she’s awake.

She starts to pace again, thinking about everything that has happened and trying to make some sense of it. Pressing her fingers to her brow, Yasmin sighs. The only other thing she can think off it that strange static she heard when Graham tried to contact the Doctor. But why would there be _static_? The communicators were meant to be able to reach each other through time and space, yet now it chooses to fail.  
“You’re going to wear a hole into the ground if you keep pacing like that,” Graham breaks her mental track, she becomes so self conscious she actually stops in place.

“I just don’t get it.” She slouches her shoulders and puts her hands on her hips, she felt awfully useless. “The Doctor just suddenly disappears and doesn’t even think to give leave us a message?” She really doesn’t want to think that they’ve been abandoned, she can’t deal with that right now. Not when they’re stuck on another TARDIS.

“That and the static is weird,” Ryan says with a slight shrug, and Yaz frowns.

“Weird?” She echoes, why would static be weird? Unless. She grins, “it’s a message.” Graham’s and Ryan’s eyes slowly widen in dawning realisation.

“But what are we going to do with a load of static in our ears?” Graham asks as Ryan watches the exchange, moving his gaze between them as a creeping silence sets in. There is a pressure in the air, like she’s taking a surprise exam without properly preparing. The familiar crushing and horribly stressful feeling of _being needed_. But despite it all, she feels proud, even if she’s just getting a taste of what it’s like for the Doctor.

“Maybe we can plug the message the Doctor sent into the console somehow?” Yaz says, breaking the tension. “The Professor told the ship to activate some emergency procedures, maybe we can ask it to help us?”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Graham says, his hands still hovering over the Professor’s wrist. “Besides, do you want to go mucking about with a space-time ship? You could accidentally land us into a sun!”

“I’m not going to muck about with the controls.” Yaz frowns, crossing her arms. “I’m just going to talk to it. Maybe it’s like the Doctor’s TARDIS.”

Graham sighs, his shoulders crumpling inward and back slouching. “Alright, but if we begin to move I’m blaming you.” Yaz grins as he unclips the small circular unit from beneath his ear and hands it to her gently.

She takes a deep breath and walks towards the console, the TARDIS grumbles at her approach and the room feels like it’s set in motion. The lights brighten and shine on her, almost like a spotlight. Yaz fights the prickle she gets in her skin as it judges her. She gulps, clearly this TARDIS is a lot more terrifying than the Doctor’s TARDIS. She really misses that blueish box.  
“Ehm… Hi!” She says, staring up at the white glowing cylinder of ominousness. “I’m Yaz, I travel with the Doctor, who also has a TARDIS.” The grating under her feet seems to rumble and a blue monitor on one of the panels lights up, circular symbols spinning and twisting on the display furiously. Yaz gets the impression she upset the ship already. “We were hoping you could help us, the Doctor left a garbled message and we can’t decipher it.” Yaz displays the comm unit in her palm, hoping that this TARDIS can actually see and comprehend the object in her hands.

Clearly, the TARDIS has other ideas. The lights dim around Yaz once again, the monitor flickers off, and the rumbling disappears, leaving them back in the quiet nightmare.  
“Hello?” She tries to get the TARDIS’s attention back again with little success.

“Okay, I think that’s enough with talking to semi-sentient spaceships for one day,” Ryan says a little teasingly. Yaz huffs and returns to the small med-bay bitterly. The Doctor’s TARDIS would have helped, or might have also given her the silent treatment. But if there is one thing the Doctor’s TARDIS wouldn’t have done, it would be to leave her hanging.

“The Doctor’s TARDIS is better anyway,” Yaz remarks.

First, silence. Then, a flurry of activity. The ridges on the walls seem to ripple and turn, the glass cylinders twist with the central console and pulse in a sharp white glow. The deep navy and electric blue lights simmering around them like a thunderstorm. Deep down, under the floors of the room comes the loud thrumming of something that sounds like a fog-horn and the ringing of a siren merged into one scream.  
A cool breeze kicks up through the vents, powerful enough that they have to grip onto anything possible to hold on and stay standing. It’s clearly targeting them, and _only_ them. The equipment and even that bottle isn’t at all disturbed. Graham is holding onto the medical table with every ounce of strength, whereas Ryan topples over on his chair, gripping onto the grated floor. The rumbling deepens and the flooring beneath Yaz’s feet becomes unstable, she scrambles to the floor and drops the comm. Her heart plummets as she sees the tiny disk fall between the grates and disappear beneath the floor.

With a faint ‘clink,’ they are left catching their breath, wondering just what in the everlasting _hell_ happened. Yaz slowly climbs to a stand as Graham finally lets go of the Professor’s medical table and Ryan untangles himself from the toppled chair.

“Way to go making it upset!” Graham cries, his face is red from exertion.

A fizz comes from the same screen on the console panel, it takes a few moments for the fuzziness to subside and the same garbled message to play out on loud speaker. Yaz looks at Ryan and Graham, her eyebrows raised and body preparing for another hurricane to pass over the TARDIS.  
They creep closer to the image on the screen, just to get a good look to make sure they aren’t missing anything. But it clicks off, like a mother switching off the TV just when it was getting to the good bit.  
A projector suddenly appears beneath Yaz’s feet, she stumbles backwards and watches as strings of light form into the familiar holographic picture of the Doctor. She’s so lifelike, it’s almost like she’s actually there. Paused in time.  The projector beeps and the Doctor projection starts to animate, her chest heaving big lungfuls of air.  
“Hiya gang!” Her eyes light up and Yaz very nearly answers back.

“Doctor what’s going on?” Graham answers instead.

“Currently, I’ve been whisked away by some strange energy signal.” She looks around at nothing, her posture is hunched and her hands are fiddling with something they can’t see. “Also, this is a projection _message_ Graham!” She seemingly stares right at him, if a little bit off to the side, “I can’t hear you!”

“Oh bloody hell, not this again,” he says, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets.

“I don’t have any control over this, the TARDIS is being _forced_ to comply.” The Doctor’s breathing becomes more frantic and laboured, “and it’s not that often that she’s forced to comply! But she’s dealing with the laws of time, it’s written in her very coding! ‘Not going’ is not an option and I’m stuck in the thick of it I’m afraid.”

“What are we meant to do then?” Graham comments rather than asks her, most likely learning from his past experiences for once. If only he could do the same for his button pushing nature.

“If you’re seeing this, you’ve probably found our scapegoat and are probably playing this message on a spaceship projector or that fancy app I put on Ryan’s phone when he wasn’t looking.” Yaz watches as he instantly checks his phone, he looks to Yaz and shakes his head. Seems like things didn’t go quite as the Doctor expected it to. “Now, if I’m right, she should be able to help you or you should be able to help her. Find the Stenza, find out what they're doing and how they're leaving messages for us, and only us. _That’s_ how you can potentially stop this and not cause a massive rip in the time-space continuum—” she winces, “—alright, not the best choice of words. But everything will be fine, well mostly fine… Probably fine. Alright, _not_ fine at all.” She flinches suddenly and a deep scratch appears on her cheek. She looks at them silently, then stares over their shoulders.  
“Take care of them.”

“I will.”

Yaz nearly pulls a muscle when she swings her head over her shoulder, staring at the Time Lord who looks to have just woken up from a great nap. If she ignores the dried reddish-gold blood of course. The Professor peers at nothing as the Doctor’s message repeats behind them, her eyes blank and distant.  
She stands slowly, testing the waters. Not even bothering to glance at them or look at the hologram projection. A few of her joints crack as she stretches out her legs. Her hand is still pressed against the large bandage at her side. The Professor notices the bottle beside her instantly, as if she has some sort of superpower of noticing new things left in her TARDIS. She lifts it up and squints at the label, sighing, she places it back down on the desk. Either it’s completely unimportant, or even the Professor herself can’t transcript the language written on that label. Either/or, the result is disappointing.  
“Are you alright?” Yaz asks, because the boys were too busy staring with their mouths open.

“Never better,” she replies and taps something on the wall once she removes the brace from her arm. Yaz turns around to see the projector turn off and return under the TARDIS panels. “How did you get my ship to play that recording?” Her eyebrow is raised and head slightly tilted. Not defensive, but curious.

“Ah, well, um.” Yaz’s face goes red, she can’t find it in her to say that she had to insult the ship to do it.

“We might have… Maybe…” Ryan is withering under the Professor’s stare, he’s shrugging noncommittally and scratching his neck, he then became very interested in his phone. Likely trying to find that secret app the Doctor might have tried to install.

“So.” Graham clears his throat, “we might have said that… The Doctor’s TARDIS was better?”

The Professor’s eyes widen briefly when the TARDIS is mentioned, but she is quickly distracted when the lights darken again and the panelling around them grumbles. The Professor looks shocked now, her eyebrows shooting high as her lips part and watches the dramatic reaction her ship is having. Then, she bursts out laughing. Clenching her side tighter with one hand as her other tries to stifle the chuckle, the deadly howling of her TARDIS apparently just being an everyday occurrence to her. Yaz swears that she can never keep up with these aliens.

“Oh that’s _amazing_.” The Professor wipes an amused tear from her eye, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her get so upset! Didn’t think that such a shy, yet proud thing could even manage to control the ventilation ducts that aptly.” She walks up to the console and pats it soothingly, a similar gesture that the Doctor has done on many occasions. Yaz blinks as the lights return to normal and the thundering returns to the subtle hum, she really needs to stop comparing the Professor to the Doctor. Even if their names are similar and the way they interact with their TARDIS’s are near identical.

“Who _are_ you?” Yaz asks, because she really can’t stop herself now.

There is a pause and the professor frowns slightly her lips pressed together, “I’m the professor, that’s all there is to it.” She says, but despite the hard set features, she doesn’t look like she believes it. She then quickly grins and winks at them, Yaz ignores the skip in her heart.

“Do you know the Doc?” Graham speaks up, clearing his throat to try and ease the awkward tension. His way of warming people up almost reminds Yaz of a certain presenter on the telly. “We guessed that you were a Time Lord like her.”

“Time Lord?” The Professor quirks a grin, “bit pretentious isn’t it?” Graham raises his eyebrows and looks away sheepishly, his secret expression of ‘ _you said it, not me_.’ She doesn’t however, answer his question, which is also much like the Doctor.

“So? Are you?” Yaz asks, then quickly regrets it when the Professor glares at her, dangerous and calculated.

“No,” she says, but quickly frowns, “it’s complicated.” Then she’s silent again.

Yaz supposes that this is were the similarities between the Professor and the Doctor end. The Doctor is a very chatty person, like she is afraid of the silence in the room and tries her best to fill in whenever possible. Even after all that’s happened with the Master, she continued to chat pointlessly about nothing. The Professor is the stark opposite. She presses various buttons on the console — all of which don’t really do anything in the console room — and she’s quiet. Barely making any sound at all. That’s how Yaz notices it, the hesitation in her movements, like she’s not too sure of what she’s doing.  
“You have two hearts.” It’s Ryan that ultimately says it first, “then, you went into a healing coma as soon as we got you here.”

“Lots of species have two hearts and can heal themselves dear.” The Professor doesn’t look at them, her head hanging lower. “I may be quite the spectacle, but I’m not all that special.”

“Please don't deflect the question, Professor.” Yaz says a bit too bitterly than she intended and instantly regrets saying anything, the Professor of course says nothing. Right now she’s like the Doctor in a mood, times ten. “Do you know the Doctor?”

The Professor pauses briefly at the mention of the name, then she took a deep breath and turns to face them. Leaning on the console with her arms crossed. “You humans never stop with the questions! Doctor, Doctor, _Doctor_ -“ She says the name so scandalously that Yaz got goosebumps, it practically drips from her lips. “I know a Doctor, in a matter of speaking. I know many in fact, but not _personally_.”  
Yaz takes back any thoughts she has had that the Professor is anything like the Doctor.

“But do you know _the_ Doctor?” Yaz swallows slightly as the Professor narrows her eyes in on her, frowning ever so slightly.

She then sighs, her body seems to deflate slightly, but she still looks guarded. “I don’t know,” she says, now looking disinterested. “I don’t exactly have all of my memories, didn’t think anyone besides me even had a TARDIS. But here we are.”

“You have amnesia?” Ryan says, “are you even sure that you’re name is ‘the Professor’?”

“I’m not, but I’m the Professor now and that’s what counts.” She smiles, and now Yaz can see the Doctor in her again. Her mind is spinning from all the shared quirks. “And right now, something very interesting is happening, and I’m always up for an adventure.” There is a familiar spark of mischief in her eyes, a look so confident and illusive that she may very well get along with the Corsair. If not the Doctor herself, what with Yaz's constant whiplash of comparing the two.

She jumps into action again, not as animated as the Doctor, but definitely as enthusiastic. Flicking tiny switches and pushing buttons that click like a typewriter, she gives them sparing smug grins as she circles the console back to where she started. Then, possibly for drama's sake alone, she leans against the console, next to the impressive lever that makes Yaz's heart beat faster. The Professor taps in teasingly, she's drawing this out on purpose and Yaz can't quite make up her mind if she loves it or hates it. But just when she gives them a devilish look, she pulls away and stands up straight.  
The Professor sighs and picks at the holes in her torn up shirt, she frowns as some of the dried blood flakes off. “Right, the world might end and time might be collapsing around me. But I am not going anywhere until—“  
She stops. Her is voice sticking in her throat as if she is choking. The flash of impatience that jolted through Yaz is now wiped away with a hot, pooling concern and worry. The Professor jaw shudders and she slowly looks down at her hands. They were jittering and fading before their eyes.

“Professor?” Yaz’s voice hitches as the static climbs up the Professor’s arms, fading her out of existence in a bright white light. She reaches out to her, to try and keep her stable or to pull her away from _whatever_ it is. But the Professor draws away, her eyes wide and lips quivering.

“No! Don’t come any closer!” She yells, her voice sounding distorted and distant.

“What’s going on!” Yaz yells back, Graham and Ryan chiming in with their own variants of confusion that are lost in the chaos. A storm kicks up around them, ruffling their clothes and pushing them back. Yaz can’t tell if it’s the Professor’s doing, or her TARDIS’s.

“I- I think I’m being displaced.” The Professor gasps, she lunges for the console and yanks the lever down once more. Yaz can feel the ship moving somewhere, but to where, she isn’t sure. She grips onto one of the metal bars again and hopes that the landing is soft.

“Displaced? Why? How?” Ryan is the first to ask, he’s drawing nearer to her apparently by instinct.

“It must be because of my timeline, and the anomalies,” the Professor says, more so for herself. Her voice sounding even further away despite being less than ten feet from them. “It’s been rewritten, I’ve seen things I shouldn’t have seen, remembered things that maybe I wasn’t meant to remember yet… And the universe is trying to fix itself.”

“By what? Turning you into some real life static?” Yaz can hear Graham’s voice beside her, the light is so bright now that she has to squint to be able to see the Professor’s outline. Yaz can barely tolerate the annoying fizzing and buzzing in her ears, deafening her slowly.

“Listen! I’ve sent you back to Earth!” The Professor says, her voice growing even fainter as the TARDIS whirs around them once again, “don’t know when or where exactly, but I’m sure you’ll cope.”

“ _What?_ ” Ryan’s voice hitches.

“Look after my TARDIS, don’t let her get lonely.” The light consumes her, and she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's back! I took a longer break from this fic than I needed but it paid off, my college work is now fully complete and sent away. Now nothing is stopping me from working on this, so be prepared for scheduled updates.  
> Thank you so much for your patience, I hope you enjoyed and are staying safe!


	6. Falling Through Time and Space

Bright white static, golden threads. It’s the same feeling again, like she’s falling into nothing and everything at once. The Professor tries to splay her arms out, to catch herself on a timeline of any sort and force herself through. But she’s in slow motion again, not fast enough to grab anything until the universe just so happens to figure out what to do with her.  
The Professor peers into the multicoloured nebulae passing her, noticing in rapt fascination as the golden strings of time seem to bring the images flooding her mind to life. An alien made of metal but not fully complete, marching through smoke and ruins. The picture is fuzzy, but the Professor is willing to bet that it’s a Cyberman. Returned from the dead yet again.  
She thinks that she’s dealt with them personally before, but she can’t quite remember it.

A screech unlike any other pierces into her mind, echoing through the haze of glowing energy and fog surrounding her. Of course, with long and strange periods of rest in the TARDIS, complete with strange creaking and strange groaning. The Professor has learned a lot about the various inhabitants of the time vortex. Something vague in her mind reminds her that for such creatures to show their ugly faces, either a cataclysmic event must have occurred in the universe, or that it must just be a particularly bad day. Right now, watching the shadows of wings around her, and hearing the hissing and screaming bellowing from all sides. The Professor can hazard a guess that it’s her having a cataclysmically bad day.

With a burst of adrenaline, she launches her hand through the strange fog of the void and tries once again to grab something. It’s almost embarrassing how desperate she is for some form of grounding, though the Professor judges that it must be a primal urge — to grab onto something or someone when in times of danger. The small gesture doesn’t do much in deterring the screaming creatures around her, (just what _were_ they called again?) The flapping of wings and glimpses of sharp tails and talons in the mist is faster now, and getting closer to her near paralytic self. It’s a rather poor time then, for the Professor to ruminate on when she last felt panic.

The Professor closes her eyes tightly and feels her body brace for a sudden attack, heart thundering like a war drum and breathing ragged. The screeches are horrifying, grabbing onto strange fears and anxieties that the Professor never knew she was once frightened of. In this moment, these creatures might as well have been reaping off of her nightmares. Wrapping white spacesuits, shadows and loneliness with a ribbon of time.

Waiting in the strange ‘in-between’ of time, the Professor has no clue how long she had been stewing in fright. But nightmares don’t last forever, although her sense of touch may be muted she can sense the slight shift in the strange space around her. Slowly, the screaming of creatures that could give any monster a run for its money begins to fade. Maybe it’s the universe finally taking pity on her, and even if that concept leaves a poor taste in her mouth, the Professor can’t begin to complain. Or maybe (and definitely more likely) she just so happened to be incredibly, near stupendously lucky.

 _Just breathe_. Breathing should be easy, everyone does it. Even the most primitive of creatures with half developed brains can breathe in some way, though it could just be that those creatures haven’t yet learned how to hold their breath. The Professor doubts that these creatures would be alive very long if they knew how to do that. She stutters, losing concentration for just long enough that her body rudely stiffens again and her throat tightens. _Just breathe,_ slowly, in and out.  
Hearts are now slowing in her chest and the strange numbness of the vacuum now seems to soothe her. It really shouldn’t, but the Professor isn’t going to start questioning what does and doesn’t calm her down _now_ of all times.

A child’s laughter echoes around her, chiming and jovial despite all the atrocities this world has yet to throw at them. A small and lithe figure seems to run around through the clouds and mist around the Professor, appearing one moment then gone the next like some sort of timeless ghost. They seem familiar somehow… _Ah, more visions_.  
At least it’s a reprieve from the rather dangerous norm, if only more kids could laugh so heartily around the universe. The strange disembodied voice becomes near comforting, until it suddenly stops and the Professor is staring down at the body of a small child with changing faces. She doesn’t have time to feel the shock as she’s suddenly hid with a blast of gold and is now falling yet again.

Faster and faster through dark red clouds. Sickening smoke fills her lungs and the Professor coughs as she falls through a burning nebula, the nightmarish pictures of Gallifrey circling around her. She closes her eyes and looks away, her head beginning to ache as flitters and fragments of more memories swirl around her mind. Memories that she doubts are entirely hers.  
The heat passes her face and the air cools. Falling even further than before. The Professor lets out a deep relieving breath and continues looking around in her new state of flux. A colder biome in space swallows her, ice blue and painful.

Of course, the worst possible thought to have when confronted with a tundra is ‘I _really hope I don’t end up here_.’ Especially when she hasn’t yet given much thought to what coat to wear, (because she really does need a coat of some sort.) And why is it such a bad idea to think that? Well, because the Professor’s knees are already buried in a thick layer of snow.

The whisking wind bites at her skin, seeping in through the holes and tears in her clothes. Snow dusting on her curly dark hair and covering her lashes. This settles it, next chance she gets she’s going to wear a warm coat. The Professor can hardly hear anything over the howling blizzard. Her body reacts instantly as she hunches in on herself, rubbing her body to try and generate what little heat that she can. She remembers being in the cold like this once, back when she had golden, curlier hair. _Space hair_. She bites back the jolt in her temple and focuses on surviving.

First priority is shelter, it’s _always_ shelter. You could be stranded in the depths of space and that law of survival will always ring true. The Professor scans the wintery scene, trying to peek through the fog of snow and gain any type of awareness as to where she actually is.  
She sucks some air through her teeth, trying to taste the time or maybe sense the location. It makes her tongue burn and throat tense, but there is one thing for sure. She’s on Earth.

Bloody hell, when did this planet get so cold? The Professor shuffles through the snow, her body aching. Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of global warming crisis by now? The Professor frowns, as if she knows what’s going on in some remote planet. She doesn’t even know enough about Earth all that well, even if she feels some sort of connection with it. The only fragments of knowledge she can remember right now, is that she sent the humans here.

The Professor violently begins to shiver, her hearts slowing down and eyes closing. _None of that now_ , to sleep or pass out in this climate is to gain the golden ticket to whatever afterlife there may be for a traveller of space and time. She’ll also have to keep this to herself, she will be very embarrassed if her TARDIS were to find out she nearly froze to death on _Earth_. It’s not even an ice-planet!

A distant noise draws the Professor’s attention, she looks up and finds three figures in the distance. Humanoid shaped and standing a little too still for comfort. There is an outline of something large an impressive behind them, a glowing blue light radiating from within it.  
A few possibilities present themselves. First it could be some human explorers or scientists, learning about the ice just to sate their unending curiosity. Second, it could be the three humans and the TARDIS. Or lastly, it might be some trouble that she is most certainly looking for. The Professor grins, finally, something goes right for a change.  
“Hello there!” She calls out to them. Her voice very weak and shivering, briefly the Professor wonders if they even heard her. The figures twitch slightly and one of them draws closer. Good, because her knees are getting a bit wobbly and she’s exhausted.

She blinks slowly, blearily. And the figure is right in front of her. Tall, dark and suited up. The Professor’s hearts drop as she watches the very same alien that attacked her approach threateningly. It doesn’t look so amused this time. The alien removes his visor, showing off a few more teeth added to the collection. The space on his cheek still uncomfortably blank.

“ _You_ ,” he gurgles through the wind, “how are you here?”

“Well that’s a nice welcome,” the Professor manages to say through chattering teeth. At least she still has teeth to chatter. “Don’t suppose you have anything strong to drink? Really need something to warm the blood. Or anything warm in general?” As he takes a step closer she gives the alien a once over, “you aren’t exactly warm, dear.” The warrior raises his hand, it crackles and steams ominously. She takes a quick step back, though nearly collapses as she can hardly feel her legs.

Her brain surges with yet more adrenaline, glancing around in hopes of finding a way out. She hasn’t forgotten what their previous encounter entailed, and she doesn’t exactly want to know how worse it gets after being temporary displaced.  
“So what’s going on here?” She raises her voice a fraction, trying to steel her nerves. “Isn’t exactly the best place for a holiday, but I’m not one to judge.”

The alien— what was is that Yaz called them again? Stenza? — comes a step closer, a snarl on his face and a look of death in his eyes. The crackling hand is looming closer, and she has no weapons. Well, it’s not like the weapons would have been useful anyway but still.  
“Don’t you want to know how I got here?” She tries in a last ditch effort and rather surprisingly it works. The alien grumbles and falters slightly, a menacing head tilt telling her to continue talking. It’s likely that he got it from one of his victims, mocking them even in death.  
“If you want to know, I need to know how _you_ got here.”

“That is irrelevant,” he replies.

“Clearly it isn’t if I’m standing here,” she says. “So explain, just how exactly do you end up on a dying planet and get over here? You don’t exactly have a vortex manipulator.”

“We have no need of such primitive devices when our Stenza technology can harness the powers we have been granted.” A small blue light on his suit begins to blink, if the Professor squints she swears that it’s a small short-ranged teleporter. Did they really manage to harness their displacement by using that? Or did they essentially make a rudimentary vortex manipulator from it?

Of course, she knows when unnecessary questions are just that. Unnecessary. Instead she says (and hopes not to regret it), “not bad, though I still think I prefer vortex manipulators when it come to quick travel. You know, given that they’re unlikely to leave you stranded in some sort of void.”

The jibe doesn’t sit well at all. Suddenly she’s facing down the hand once again and an alien that’s not only murderous, but angry. Two things that really shouldn’t be mixed, especially when they have a weird and deadly hand that crackles. Now would be a very good time for some help from the universe for a change.

The Professor is thrown back by an unnatural force, returning to that glowing white glitch far quicker than before. That can only mean that her body is becoming far more destabilised. It’s not all bad, given that it just saved her life, she would have to say that slowly disappearing has its benefits. The Stenza roars as she falls back through time again, apparently unable to follow nor catch her with that modified teleporter.

In a way, the Professor feels disappointed. Of course, she isn’t keen on getting frozen solid or used as some sort of trophy. No, she’s disappointed because now she has more questions that she can’t answer. _Knew I should have asked more follow-up questions when I had the chance.  
_ A pit of frustration builds in her chest, making her chew her lip absently as the universe tries to think of another place to deposit her. The Professor is positive that she was standing on Earth, a very cold part of it, but Earth all the same. Those Stenza were protecting something there, plotting to use a weapon perhaps? Or maybe it’s something more advanced and time related?

She huffs, whatever reason they have is likely going to be ludicrous for any sane and/or reasonable individual. A carefully crafted cult could convince you that the sky is green, or the world is flat. Her mind wanders back to that red planet. To Gallifrey. She’s never felt so truly hollow before, the Professor takes a moment. Embracing that empty feeling, she doesn’t often have moments to brood. Never the type really. So no time like the present, in whatever present she might be in currently. Aliens invading Earth, rewriting timelines. It’s enough to make even her head spin.

A bizarre idea then occurs, invasive and clingy like a leech. If only she could find this ‘Doctor’ she’s heard so much about. To meet her in person and not some disembodied voice in a pre-recorded message.  
It’s time she get some answers, and maybe find out why the name still gives her goosebumps.

Her body flickers again and this time her landing is far less than elegant. Sinking like a stone in water, the Professor whacks the ground painfully. Oh this has been such an _adventure_ , hasn’t it? She winces and stumbles to her feet again, she really does hope this will be the last time she has to ‘stumble’ to do anything.  
It’s dark and dreary, the Professor looks around her landing zone and keeps her arms out in front of her as she navigates the darkness. As her eyes adjust, she can see that the walls and floor are made out of a stone like material which gives of the illusion of a cave. But that doesn’t fool her space sense. A hum of engines rumbles beneath her feet, she hears the mechanical thunder within the walls. Defensive systems and life support in full operation by the oily smell of it.

Absolutely zero lights. The Professor grumbles, she really should have a torch. Never go wrong with a useful torch. Can’t go wrong with a gun either, which she had lost back in Jashe-K01.  
She presses her hands up against the walls and follows the cold rocky exterior, listening intently to the echoing of her feet. Even the slightest change could indicate missing floors or walls. This place feels weird, it gives off such a strange sensation that’s almost similar to nostalgia. Or perhaps it’s the diluted version of tension and utter terror as her mind screams, ‘ _watch the shadows’_.

It’s not too long until her hands grasp something metal, the room is smaller than she made it out to be. Her fingers trace the ridges, forming a shape in her mind. The panel of metal felt familiar, almost like a _door—_

It opens abruptly; a harsh golden light and a god-awful whirring suddenly attacks her hyper alert senses. She winces, squints and then blinks in no particular order. The Professor is both delighted and overwhelmed by the familiarity of a shocked face greeting her.  
“ _What are you doing here?_ ” A voice whispers harshly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... It's finally here.
> 
> Life may have gotten in the way but I am going to get this story posted if it's the last thing I do. Thank you all for being so patient and for every comment I recieved, I seriously can't express how happy it made me feel :)
> 
> Stay safe and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> (I swear, the next update won't take half a year. I promise!)


	7. Home

“She’s… Gone.” Yaz stares at the empty space by the TARDIS console, her mouth dry and heart racing. The TARDIS is quiet again, far too quiet for her liking. She looks at Graham and Ryan, as if to affirm that ‘yes, that really did just happen,’ and ‘no you weren’t imagining it.’ The strangest part in all of this, is despite being shocked that a woman just _disappeared_ in front of them, Yaz isn’t _surprised_ by it.  
It’s honestly expected as this rate. Especially when the disappearing individual resembles the Doctor, in a peculiar twist of fate. A strange dawning overcame Yaz, like an idea or theory sparking to life and rattling in her brain. “Maybe that’s how she escaped the Stenza.”

“Well, you might be right,” Graham says, he’s still staring at the spot wearily.

They’re quiet for a bit. Maybe they’re all struck with anticipation now, waiting for her to appear again so they might question her on what she meant about her TARDIS, or to try and find the Doctor. She did mention in her message that she had no control of her TARDIS, maybe the Professor’s could do the same thing and essentially follow her? Even so, she doesn't know how to do that without the Professor being here, or how to control this ship.  
Yaz frowns, her thoughts are now too fast for even her to catch up with.

“Come on,” Ryan says, he’s turned towards the rickety TARDIS doors, “let’s go see where we are.”

The cracked and frosted doors of the red phone booth open without much effort on their part, the cold streets of Sheffield welcome them with a clammy embrace. It’s clearly been raining for a while before they showed up. Unlike the usual spots the Doctor parks her TARDIS, this red box had brought them just down the road from Graham and Ryan’s home.

It’s far too suspicious. An alien they’ve never met just happens to know where and when they live? Yaz steps outside and looks around, her eyebrows knitted in a new permanent expression of utter perplexion. She takes a deep breath, perhaps it’s just the nerves getting to her. Losing the Doctor unexpectedly and having to rely on others isn’t exactly an uncommon event, but this time it just rubs her the wrong way.

“Well, we’re home.” Graham is looking over the buildings and grey skies with his hands buried in his pockets. Yaz is almost upset at how casual he looks whenever he steps back into Sheffield, like nothing could ever sway him or bother him. She hopes that she at least looks that non-plussed. “Who’s up for some tea?”

Well, she can hardly say no to that.

The street is quiet and unassuming, the grey skies doing little to quell the anxieties eating at Yaz. She has seen so much since travelling with the Doctor, been to so many places and saved a near countless amount of people. Although they travel without much thought, there is one direction that Yaz knows about. It’s a slow direction that leads to the unsettling feeling of abnormality within the normal.

“Are you alright?” Yaz jumps slightly when Ryan bumps her elbow, he’s grinning at her.

“Oh stop it,” she says with a huff, her eyes never quite resting on one place. It doesn’t feel like home, not the Sheffield she’s used to anyway. She once read a Stephen King quote, back when she was bored out of her mind and tried to escape reality. He had stated that true terror is like someone came into your home and took everything away and replaced with a substitute, or a replica. She isn't sure about the quote, but right now, walking down the street? Yaz felt that terror.

There is a peculiar fence belonging to a house on Graham’s street, it’s solid and painted a bright white. By the looks of it right now, it’s brand new. Yaz touches it as they pass by, feeling the paint coated metal press into her palm and chill her warm skin. Graham and Ryan might not think anything of it, but she knows for a certainty that the fence was broken a few years ago after some drunk bloke crashed his car.   
She remembers that there was a giant fuss about it, the owners got very upset and like any good citizen they immediately called the police. It was one of the first times she felt like a proper police officer, even if at the time she was still complaining about getting 'unimportant' jobs.

“Are we sure that she took us to the right year?” Yaz asks, trying to slow Graham’s and Ryan’s pace by lagging behind. She instinctively looks at her phone, but since it received the Doctor’s unique SiM card upgrade it only gives her the date of the day she left as default. It's currently 3:30, as it has been for the last few hours come to think of it.

“Now you're going mad,” Ryan says with a laugh, he turns around and looks at her.

“Listen, this woman is not the Doctor. She’s not even human, how would she _know_ where we live?” She looks around and shrugs her shoulders, “doesn’t it feel weird to you? Like you’re living out a memory from a few years ago?"

“Are you saying that at any moment, we’re just going to walk into—“

“—Grace.” Graham’s voice wavers, and Ryan’s grin drops. They hastily look over Graham’s shoulder, watching painfully as Grace steps out of the house dressed in scrubs, and walks to her car. Getting herself to an evening shift by the look of it.

“Hide—“ Yaz grabs Ryan before she could form a full sentence, watching as Grace opens the car door and places her bag inside. “—Hide! Graham quick!” She urges him, but he’s standing stock still. Ryan quickly grabs his arm, and just as the car’s ignition rumbles down the street they duck behind some old thrown out furniture and a parked car. Grace drives by without a second glance. They're silent for an uncomfortable amount of time, Graham is refusing to meet anyone's eyes and Ryan is staring at nothing in particular. Yaz can’t begin to imagine what they feel right now, knowing that their entire world just drove by them and they couldn't even say 'hello' one more time. It's _different_ \- she thinks - from meeting Grace back when she was still a student training to be a nurse in Uni. Whether it's because this version of her is far too recent or familiar, it's hard to say.

“Okay, so you were right,” Ryan eventually breaks the tension with a strained voice, he looks back to Yaz. “Do we go back to the Professor’s TARDIS?”

Yaz presses her lips together and stays quiet for a moment, truthfully she doesn’t know what they should do. The Professor’s TARDIS is nothing like the Doctor’s, and if sentient ships are to be believed, then they’ve definitely gone off to a wrong start. Would the TARDIS even let them back in?  
Yaz frowns, she really needs to come up with a way to differentiate the ships.

Simultaneously, all three of their phones start to buzz and ring in their pockets. In general, they very rarely, if ever, get phone calls from someone during their trips with the Doctor. Even if someone were to call them, it would instantly go through to voicemail. Sharing cautious looks, they pull out their phones and watch as the dark screens start to jitter and glitch.

“This had better not be the result of one of the Doctor’s tinkering again,” Graham says grimly and taps the home button on his phone, trying to get the device to respond. “Next time I see her, I swear that I’ll give her a cat bell. That’s sure to stop her from knicking my gadgets.”

“How will that help?” Yaz raises an eyebrow.

“Well I’ll hear her coming. It gives me time to prepare, or hide my things,” Graham says with a huff, “it’s the only Idea I’ve got.”

“Yeah, I tried that,” Ryan says with a wince, “it didn’t end well. She started lecturing me on the importance of cats to society and how it’s rude to make them wear collars.”

Yasmin jolts when her phone suddenly zaps her arm, much like getting a static shock from a car. She hisses and looks down at the phone, noticing that the glitches and static are morphing into a solid picture.

“What is that?” She says and squints at the screen, Ryan and Graham look over her shoulder curiously. The static blends into the colours of the glitch almost hypnotically, suddenly both Graham and Ryan wince.

“Ow!” They cry, almost in insult and look at their phones. Both of which are the same as Yaz’s. The screens flare and get brighter, so bright that it’s almost like looking into the sun. Ryan drops his phone in surprise, Yaz and Graham follow suit and quickly they step away from what could potentially be a bomb. There is a sharp ringing now coming from the devices, Yaz clamps her hands around her ears and look away. Bracing herself for the explosion.  
The phones spark and fizzle, the screens chip and the plastic burns. So much for going out with a bang.

Well, that’s something. Yaz looks to Ryan and Graham, both look surprised and somewhat shaken. Something tells her that this isn’t one of the Doctor’s tinkering gone wrong, but something a lot more serious than being sent to the wrong timezone.

“My phone!” Ryan raises and drops his hand in defeat, he is already shaking his head. “Not _again_.”

“I think that our phones are the last things to worry about son,” Graham says, placing his hand onto Ryan’s shoulder and patting it somewhat comfortingly.

“Do you think the Professor has something to do with this?” Yaz's eyes travel back to the ruined phones, they’re still smouldering and the plastic has now melted onto the grey pavement. She isn’t sure exactly how a stranger with a TARDIS could have anything to do with spontaneously combusting phones, but it isn’t exactly a coincidence. The Doctor doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“I don’t know, but she is… weird.” Graham sniffs and puts his hands into his pockets. “She does seem to be a lot like the Doctor despite claiming that she doesn’t know her.”

“Yeah, but she mentioned that she lost her memories. Like amnesia.” Ryan adds, his shoulders are slumped and his tone still somewhat bitter. “Maybe she actually knew the Doctor once.”

“Well.” Yaz steps towards in front of them, turning to look directly at them with her hands on her hips. Trying at least, to channel some of her police training and seem like she has a plan when really, she doesn’t have a clue what to do. Maybe that’s just the Doctor rubbing off on her.  
“It doesn’t matter if she knew the Doctor once or not, right now we’re stuck in the past. That means stay out of trouble.” She points a finger at them and narrows her eyes. “Something is clearly going on here if our phones just blew up on us, that means that we’ve got to find out what happened and do something about it. We can’t just give up and stay in the TARDIS.”

“Well, the Professor _did_ tell us not to make her lonely,” Ryan says, far too smugly for Yaz’s liking. “I’m joking—“ He raises his hands in response to her firm glare, “but where do we start? Or go? Can’t exactly stay out here forever, someone might recognise us.”

He has a very good point, normally they wouldn’t exactly go into the past… well, this close to home. She takes a moment to sigh and look around, her gaze lingers on Graham and Ryan’s soon-to-be house, an idea of terrible proportions make her insides clench.

“So, when you said we should ‘ _stay out of trouble_ ,’ I assumed that breaking into my— _Grace’s_ home, would be the number one of what _not_ to do!” Graham grumbles as he manages to hoist himself through the kitchen window, Yaz shushes him as Ryan pulls him impatiently and quickly shuts the window behind them as they loiter in the quiet house. They already made enough noise when they dropped one of the plant pots outside.

“I wouldn’t exactly say it’s number one on my list,” Yaz whispers as she looks down the hall and into the living room. “It’s definitely in the top ten though.”

“Come on, let’s just look around, turn the telly on and go.” Ryan brushes by her a little roughly, his face is stoic and his shoulders are unnaturally tense. He purposefully doesn’t look at any of the pictures, nor does he spare a glance at the shawl on the couch. Yaz is stunned for a moment, he's never really seen him like this before and the guilt of even suggesting this and convincing them to follow through is making her queasy. She bit her lip and stands behind him as he switches the TV on and flicks it through the news channels, his hand is clenching the remote a bit too tightly too. Yaz can’t find the right words to say.

“You know, Grace told me once that her house was broken into.” Graham says, he’s standing beside the table, sadly looking at the shawl. “She said that they didn’t take a thing, but washed her mug and made a right mess of her garden.” Yaz smiles slightly as Graham lifts a simple mug, it's decorated with flowers and swirling vines. Simple, but to Graham it likely looks like a treasure. “I never thought that I was the one that broke in.”

As they sit and watch the screen, listening to various presenters and the sound of running water, Ryan finally lets out a sigh and puts down the remote. BBC news, or at least one of the BBC news channels, played on the screen. It’s filled with the usual weather for Sheffield in Spring.

“Never thought that this would happen,” Ryan says as they watch the screen, barely processing what’s going on. Yasmin looks at him, his arms are draping over his knees. “I mean, not like we could have predicted this happening. I just never wanted to go back to visit my Nan, not after what happened.”

Yaz gently puts her hand onto his arm, “I’m sorry for this, I really am.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.” He clears his throat and pats her hand a bit awkwardly. “If anything it’s actually nice. It’s like somewhere, my Nan’s still living her life. But this doesn’t mean I like breaking into her house to watch the telly. How often do we learn about alien invasions anyway?-” He grins, "-it's all covered up. Either Darren Brown, kids mucking about, or terrorists."

They look back to the screen, watching as the weather report transitions to the BBC logo. Graham walks into the living room casually, paying no mind to the telly and instead looks at the old photos with a soft smile. Yaz even spies Ryan looking fondly at something he found on the coffee table. It’s always surprising when it turns out that Ryan has a lot more in common with Graham than they had thought.  
The TV screen fizzes and flickers, Yaz can feel her hair stand on end as she watches the screen glitch into a much more clearer picture. Ryan grips onto her hand and they quickly shuffle away from it just as a precaution. The last time something electronic done that, it exploded on them after all.

The mask of a Stenza greets them, the warrior is surrounded in white and the reception isn’t the best, they just stand there silently. Behind them is a large construction, something that looks remarkably like a death ray if all of those sci fi adventures taught her anything. The Stenza makes no demands, no warnings or even smug remarks, but Yasmin can recognise a threat when she sees one.  
Then, like it never happened, the picture wavers just as the Stenza removes his mask and stares cruelly. The surroundings warp as the white expanse changes to buildings under a grey sky and then, just when Yaz thinks she knows where the warrior is, it fades back into the regular day-to-day news broadcast. They continue watching, expecting the channel to notice the alien interruption and release the standard emergency news statement. But everything continues on like normal.

“It’s just like the Doctor said. We’re the only one’s seeing it for some reason,” Ryan says, climbing to his feet as he turns the TV off. “Why are we the only one’s seeing them?”

“I don’t know,” Yaz says, still staring at the screen, imagining it flickering again. “But we should go back to the TARDIS.”


	8. The Meeting

Despite the circumstances, the Professor isn’t all that upset at being the direct — if somewhat hostile — attention of a frankly quite lovely face; marred only by a single scratch on her cheek. Then again, she fancies nearly anyone with somewhat human features. The woman, who the professor believes to be the ‘Doctor’ that the humans spoke about, is staring at her in disbelief and awe. Savouring this, the Professor makes sure that the first thing to present itself to the woman’s eyes isn’t the large blood stains on her blouse.  
That would be very off-putting.

The Professor raises an eyebrow when the woman pulls away her sonic device, it’s just far enough that the continuous whirring of it isn’t going to give her a headache any time soon. They both squint at each other in the poor light of the room, basic features only lit by the golden light of that device. The Professor takes a second pass at it, barely making out the silver or steel handle the woman is gripping onto. Is that a sonic _screwdriver?_ Who makes a sonic screwdriver?  
She can’t help but chuckle.

“What are you going to do with that? Build me a desk?”

The woman gapes at her, brows knitting together in an exaggerated expression of insult. The Professor holds back another laugh and smirks at her, watching as the woman points the now not-so-threatening sonic device back at her as if it’s a warning.

“Rude. It’s very _flexible_ in a crisis!” She says, her northern English lilt now in full effect, unbridled by stodgy hologram messages.

“Oh, I bet it is.” Her eyes wander for effect rather than to take anything in, the Professor can barely see some yellow suspenders under the woman’s pale coloured coat. The woman looks at her blankly at first, yet just when the Professor starts to think her persuasive ways were ineffective, the woman leans back with a shy and somewhat awkward smile on her face.  
“Are you the Doctor?” The Professor asks.

The woman starts to walk and doesn’t even spare her a glance, it hurts a lot more than the Professor expected it to. “Yes, I’m the Doctor, Hiya—“ She gives a quick wave of her hand but is distracted by a metal formation on the ceiling of, well, wherever it is they were. The Professor starts to follow her and only got two steps in before the woman turns on her heel and stares at her again, “—so, how do you know me? How did you get here? And who are you?” The Professor notices how the Doctor’s eyes jump about her face, refusing to make eye contact as if it were some sort of taboo. “Also, what happened to you?”

“What—“ The Professor tries to say — her frown now making its home on her brow — when suddenly the Doctor dramatically outstretches her arm into the darkness. Her sonic screwdriver whirring louder. The Professor only blinks, and the shadows have been destroyed by the loud echo of clicking lights powering on, the area they stood in now lit up like a spotlight.

“Don’t miss any detail.” The Doctor says with a small smile.

_The golden breeze of those wheat fields flood the Professor’s vision, the warm gust brushing over her skin and tousling her hair. She’s barely conscious, just lying out in the field of gold, small grains grabbing onto her white dress like tiny insects. She manages to turn her head, and with tired eyes she spies someone in the distance with golden hair, looking on. There is a wheezing sound, and she finally closes her eyes._

“Are you okay?”

The Professor opens her eyes for a second time and she’s back in the cold, the Doctor is floating around her and watching her with concern. That golden hair of hers still stirring the memories. She looks at the Doctor dead in the eye, using the slight (and admittedly minuscule) height difference to her advantage.

“I’m fine,” she says, “you have beautiful hair, it… Reminded me of something.”

The Doctor’s hand travels to her head and pulls at her hair with that awkward grin of hers, the Professor smiles back and tries to distract herself from the memory, primarily thinking of all the many ways that she can run her own hands through the Doctor’s hair. It’s not a very effective distraction, as on one hand it reminds her of fingers running through wheat and the other hand she pictures both of them together... very differently.

“So, mysterious and possible-convict on board a ship that is trapped in a pocket dimension—” The Doctor clears her throat, squints at the large blood stain on her side and then side-eyes the bandaged arm. The Professor presses her hand against her side, feeling the stiff gauze and the blood residue under her fingers. The constricting sleeve around her burn suddenly feels a lot more present, the Professor hopes she didn’t pay any attention to her back, what with the various still raw cuts. “—Wounded mysterious possible-convict.” The Doctor adds, the disapproving tut isn’t lost on her.

“It’s fine, the injuries have been taken care of.” She crosses her arms and tries not to feel intimidated as the Doctor circles around her again. “It’s the Professor, if you’d care to know my name.”

“The _Professor_?” The Doctor hums, “nice name, I used to be called a professor. Technically still am a professor in many galactic universities.” She stops walking and stands in front of her, probably satisfied with her inspection by the looks of it — seems like she isn’t called ‘The Doctor’ for nothing. Her lips are pulled tight, her eyes consistently gliding around the dark room, or looking at the various bandages dotted around the Professor. With such attention, she’d have taken it as a compliment, her body is worthy of such devote. But the Doctor is still refusing to look directly into the Professor’s eyes.  
“So then, story time.” She smiles and then leans away, hands buried deep in her pockets.

As much as the Doctor’s open face begs her to answer anything and everything, the Professor looks back into the darkness surrounding them. With the harsh light over them, she can barely see anything in her peripherals. The creaking and dripping of the hull around them makes it even more unnerving.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” She says, squinting at the dark room and trying to catch that hint of movement at the corner of her eye. “Bright spotlight in a room filled in darkness? Just begs the question of what else is there, lurking around us.”

The Doctor’s pleasant smile drops slightly, her eyes darting to the darkness with what the Professor thinks to be an ungodly attractive serious face. She doesn’t rejoice in that face for long as the Doctor quickly scoffs and turns on her heels, looking at the room with polite curiosity.  
“I done a scan for lifeforms—“

“What? With your sonic screwdriver?”

“—Didn’t I say it’s good in a crisis?” The Professor bets that _she_ is. The Doctor frowns, “also, don’t interrupt me! I can’t be smart when people talk over me.” She tuts, raising her chin and lifting her eyebrow in some form of egotistic victory. “As I was saying, I done a scan for lifeforms and there was only one. Me.”

The Professor fights back with her own raised eyebrow and a far more sultry expression, “it’s not a very good sonic then, because I’m standing right here in front of you.”

The Doctor looks appalled, her body physically reels back in what could only be shock. “Lay off the sonic!” She flicks her hand and the Professor watches how the device pirouettes through the air and lands back into the Doctor’s hand. Her head begins to throb in pain, she raises her hand to massage her temples and shield her eyes from the harsh light.

In the shelter of her closed eyes, she can picture other outstretched hands holding variations of the sonic in her mind. All of them flicking it into the air and letting it dance. Twirling once again through the empty darkness, the sonic’s light radiates and thrums, then another hand catches it, and then another. Hands that she doesn’t recognise.

A simple tap on her arm jolts the Professor back into reality, the grabbing hands fade back into the recesses of her mind. Well, that was new and terrifying. When she comes back to her senses, she notices that the spotlight has dimmed comfortably and that the Doctor is now looking even more alarmed than before. She's cradling her hand as if tapping her arm had given her an electric shock.

“You know, I don’t like it when people hide things from me.” She says in such a grave and old voice, it felt like the experience of another person talking through her. Not only that, the Professor just can’t stop imagining hearing another voice lace through the Doctor’s words. It echoes in her mind and grows in fervour, saying just one word again and again, _‘River.’_

It’s a voice that she really doesn’t like right now.

“Professor, please tell me what’s happening. Let me help.” The Doctor speaks again, she’s softer now and finally looks directly into the Professor’s eyes, searching for a task or request from her rather than seeking to comfort. They’re old eyes. Old, and yet so bright. “Professor?” Now untainted by whatever it was plaguing her words, the Professor just hears the woman in front of her. A warm and kind voice that the Professor can’t help but crave more of.

Taking a step back, she pulls away from the lacing temptation to drop the whole universe off her shoulders. She’s not ready for that, but she can perhaps lead the conversation to something that doesn’t make her head spin at the sight of this Doctor’s eyes.

“The time anomaly,” the Doctor says carefully, changing the question like she’s trying not to spook a deer in the dark. The Professor doesn’t quite like it, but it’s better than the alternative. “Did you find out what it was?”

“Yes, your friends mentioned that the aliens are known as the Stenza,” The Professor says, “they called themselves the ‘echoes of the end,’ clearly they managed to harness their own untethered condition using a reprogrammed teleporter, and think that they can get away with a time and space hopping mass murder for who knows what reason.” She sighs, noticing the Doctor’s frown on her face. A barrage of questions brewing no doubt. “No clue how they even got into that state, hardly think they used a broken vortex manipulator.”

“Nah, vortex manipulators— as cheap and nasty as they are —don’t tend to fail so spectacularly. Also, using a reprogrammed teleporter?” She crosses her arms thoughtfully, a finger rests on her chin and she begins to pace. “Well it’s possible, but that’s not the issue right now. It must have been a cataclysmic event that caused that untethering.” She freezes, her back towards the Professor and her gaze likely resting in the darkness around them. “If that’s the case, they could be unravelling the fabric of the universe! Everything they touch is... Wait...” the Doctor whips her head back to the Professor, her eyes wide. “Are you—?”

“I’m currently untethered in time.” She says bluntly, only glancing at the Doctor to gauge her reaction. She’s now watching her sombrely. “I was on Jashe-K01 for the same reason as you and your friends, an anomaly in time. I found it—“ She takes a deep breath, feeling how her muscles instinctively tense and she presses her hand to the gauze at her side, “—I got too close.”

“Ah, of course.” The Professor looks at the Doctor and notices her starting to scan her with the sonic, the bleeping noise not doing anything to soothe the headache. “That explains why you feel so wrong—“ The Professor rests her hand on her hip and raises her eyebrows at her. “—Not as in _wrong_ , although, who said that anything feeling wrong can’t be good? What I mean to say, is that your place in time feels wrong. Like this place, or like—“

“—Something that shouldn’t exist, existing?” She finishes and the Doctor beams at her, setting her hearts aflutter.

“Exactly.” They look at each other lingeringly, the Professor just can’t make up her mind if she likes the Doctor’s presence or despises her. She is like a magnet, at one end she’s attracting near everything and everything, magnetising even the Professor who isn’t so easily swayed. Yet she also pushes people away, forcing them to hopelessly orbit around her in hopes that one day she’ll pull them in _just a little bit_ closer.

“Whilst I was falling through time, I seen them again on Earth.” The Professor says and the Doctor’s face drops to the ‘quietly-thinking’ face, the number of expressions she can make is quite the pleasant surprise. “They were protecting something in one of the coldest continents, something large and impressive.” The Doctor begins to pace once again, her face growing sterner. The Professor can just feel the worry and the various theories pooling out of her head, she murmured something about her friends quietly. “Where is your TARDIS?”

“What?” The Doctor raises her eyes and squints.

“Your TARDIS, you told your friends that it followed some strange energy signal somewhere and you couldn’t prevent it because of the ‘rules of time’.” She waves her hand dismissively, sure there are such things as rules of time, but a TARDIS is the only unique ship that can break them. It’s not a very convincing lie by any stretch, especially not to those who read the manual. “I’d have thought that you abandoned them, but clearly you were relying on me to take them home.”

“You took them home? As in, going back into the past and dropping them off?” The Doctor’s voice nearly warps again, that serious tone cutting through the overlay of kindness like a hot knife. Her face is a stark opposite however, she looks curious and impressed. Dare the Professor say it, grateful.

“Yes, I might be a bit off time wise.”

“But, how?” She frowns adorably again, “are you a time agent?”

“First, tell me where your TARDIS is,” she says with a smile, “we’re exchanging…” The Professor briefly loses track of thought, there was something she used to say but she can’t quite remember it. “We’re exchanging information.” It sounds terrible in her mouth, completely foreign.

The Doctor huffs, “She spat me out here and dematerialised around me. Something took her and left me behind, I’m lucky to have landed here. Didn't need the fam to know that I'm starting to lose even more control of the TARDIS, they probably already think-” She stops herself, and shakes her head before creeping slightly closer with a strained smile on her face, “nevermind... Now tell me, or it’s going to bug me. Time Agent?”

“No, I’m not a Time Agent.” She smiles, the Professor isn’t even 100% sure what a Time Agent does really; she barely meets them, yet she doesn’t think that sending people back into their correct time zones counts as a part of the job description.“My TARDIS managed to follow the artron trace on them and calculate the rough time and place you picked them up from.” The Professor smiles and watches the Doctor intently, waiting for praise. Perhaps she really is now but another planet orbiting the Doctor’s sun, waiting for that magnetising praise that would bring them just a little closer.

But she is sorely disappointed in the reality. The Doctor now has morphed her carefully curated curiosity into some bastardised version of suspicion, her old eyes no longer twinkling in wonder but dulling somewhat. Her face darkening.

“Why do you have a TARDIS?” The voice is laced again and it echoes even louder in her mind. The Professor winces but doesn’t make any moves to soothe the ache, she simply says the word presented to her in hope that it won’t hurt.

“Spoilers.”

There is a complicated emotion in the Doctor’s face, one that can’t make up its mind on how it feels and should present. She takes a calming breath, the Professor copies her by coincidence. The pain in her temples lessen and finally everything seems stable, as if the weight pressing into her head had been lifted and she can stand straight again.

It clicks, and the Professor only momentarily manages to hide her alarm and surprise. She always knew that something was placed in her mind to prevent her from remembering her past, the life before that field of wheat. It would weight down heavily in her mind like a telepathic attack, muting the feelings she’s having as if she’s experiencing the world through a barrier. But slowly and surely, that telepathic ‘wall’ is weakening. Crumbling with every unabashed stare, comment or touch from this strange woman beside her until there is once thing the Professor can be certain of. Whoever or whatever placed it, involves the Doctor.

“Okay.” The Doctor clears her throat and she smiles again, completely ignoring the exchange. The Professor swallows shakily. “Let’s get you tethered to a timeline first, prevent you from phasing out of existence again or disappearing completely.”

Swimming through the darkness of the space craft, the Professor can’t help but keep close to the Doctor and the golden light from her sonic. Ever since she woke up in that field, she’s ashamed to admit that it’s been near impossible for her to sleep without some form of light. As a person of many secrets, she imagines that it is hard to believe that one of her most embarrassing ones is that she is afraid of the dark. If that much isn’t clear already. And although there are a few others that count as close runner ups in terms of embarrassing fears, none quite seem to match the panic she feels as they keep walking through these halls without so much as idle chatter to distract her.

It’s as if there is something cautioning her to stay out of the shadows, buried deep in her subconscious. A nightmare of books and bones and space suits. And if there’s anything she genuinely doesn’t like, it’s astronaut suits — for no apparent reason.  
In these quiet moments, it’s often very easy for the Professor to realise that she _really_ doesn’t know all that much about herself.

The room that the Doctor leads her to is lit by a dull industrial light, clearly whoever owned the craft prior to whatever disaster befell them had no considerations toward style and class. The room is fairly large, though apparently damaged with what looks like burn residue, and it is littered with deconstructed components and equipment; a lot of it looks as if it were unsealed and then resoldered. There is a faint smell of burning in the air, if she strained herself, the Professor swears that she can tell what rough metal components are in the currently useless junk. _Well_ , that's delightfully strange and useful, never know when one needs to see if something contains an explosive compound.

The Doctor raises her sonic and brightens the room slightly, as if she could tell that the Professor is uncomfortable of the shadows by the walls. “Lightbulbs! Got to love them, amazing things.” The Doctor wiggles her eyebrows then spares no time in rushing up to a large tube that almost looked like insulation, and hooked it up to a glass container.  
“I found most of this stuff whilst exploring,” she says, her clever fingers now working with the wires inside the mechanical unit beside her. “I’m pretty sure most of these items fell through dimensions and ended up here, like losing something unexplainably one day and never finding it again—” she pauses her work and pulls a face, “—no, bad analogy. Far more complicated than that.”

“I understand enough,” the Professor says, she crosses her arms, “what I want to know is just how exactly you plan on tethering me to the timeline. I can already feel my own timeline being nudged and manipulated, tethering me won’t stop that.”

“It won’t,” the Doctor says and flicks a switch, the machine in front of her begins to whirr to life. A golden energy swirls in the glass container and pools out of the exposed opening like dust, its light is radiating around the room. “Luckily, I’m very smart and I’m trapped. If there is one combination that can spell disaster, it’s that one.” She smiles delightfully and gestures to the machine, “don’t really know what to call this, I’ll go for timeline tethering thingamajig.“

“Very original.” The Professor comments as she peers closer at the energy, if she didn’t know any better, this is artron energy. “How did you manage to harness the artron energy? Only a crack in time can create such an amount in this set up.” She ignores the strange way her body tingles as she mentions the crack in time, although that reaction is also definitely new. Best not to dwell in these new feelings and abilities just yet, otherwise she feels like she might have an existential crisis.

The Doctor wrings her hands with a smug grin, it’s starting to get strangely sexy at this rate. “I have built an emergency TARDIS before, not quite a full TARDIS as it wasn’t grown mind. I just deconstructed the idea and used the remnant artron energy around us. Pocket dimensions are really useful for bending the laws of physics.” She looks as if she’s bursting with artron energy herself, she just can’t keep still.  
“Now, pop your hand into it.”

“ _Excuse me?”_ The Professor recoils from the device. She most certainly will _not_ be sticking her hands into any form of pure energy.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” the Doctor says, rather unconvincingly, “the energy will seep into you and tether you to _my_ timeline, at least for the meantime. It should allow you to hop from me to a place where I’ve been, which is most likely my TARDIS.” She holds up two fingers dramatically, the Professor is liking this even less. “You only get about two stable hops, but it should be more than enough to get my TARDIS and pick me up.”

“And why can’t I just take you with me?”

“Ah, so that means you’ll do it then?” The Doctor grins.

She rolls her eyes and smiles at the now crazy scientist, debating if she should slap her or kiss her, “humour me.”

“Well, it would make me untethered too. Trust me, that cannot happen, end up creating a space-time catastrophe.” The Doctor reaches into her pocket and pulls out a square sticker with a black tab, a comms unit. The Professor remembers the Doctor’s human friends being outfitted with them like if was some sort of requirement. “I’ve modified it to be able to make long range calls—“ she taps a similar sticker under her ear, it blinks on innocently, “—easy peasy.”

The Professor sighs in defeat, there really is no other way of getting around this. She takes the unit and clicks it on beneath her ear in acquiesce, giving the Doctor a very unimpressed look as she done so. “And I guess I’ll see if I can find your friends whilst I’m at it I suppose?”

“You will?” The Doctor grins and her eyes seem to twinkle, if there is ever a moment to want to kiss someone senseless, the Professor believes that it should be now. The Doctor walks back to the machine, a happy smile on her face as she stares into the golden light.

“Well, I did promise to keep them safe,” she says a tad bitterly, she really hopes that this won’t build into a saviour complex anytime soon. “That and I do have unfinished business with the Stenza.”

With a nod, the Doctor tinkers slightly with the machine, producing a brighter light. “I’ll be in touch, and I promise I’ll save you after we stop whatever the Stenza are planning.”

The Professor feels the Doctor’s voice resonate with her as she places her hand into the golden energy, she’s heard those words before too, despite not quite remembering. The golden dust seeps into her skin like ink, slowly beginning to dematerialise her in a bright golden light. She looks to the woman with golden hair and old eyes one last time, and with a sad smile on her face she says something that she feels she should have said a long time ago.   
“Doctor, don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been waiting to post this chapter for a _long_ time.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! More chapters on the way.


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